Despite a slight dip in headcount, Duane Morris boosted both its top and bottom lines in 2025, reflecting increased demand and captured billing rate increases. According to firm chairman and CEO Matthew Taylor, demand was up across the firm’s core practice groups, which translated into 9.2% growth in gross revenue from $694.2 million to $758.4 million. Net income grew by 13.4% year over year, increasing from $179.9 million to just under $204 million. “This was our 17th straight year of sustained growth …That’s something consistent, and we’re so proud of that,” Taylor said in an interview. “We’ve seen really heavy client demand for premium and sophisticated work—we are seeing opportunities both on the trial side, the IP litigation side, a very heavy uptick in employment class actions, and a very hot upper middle-market deal flow. That, in a nutshell, is driving a ton of revenue.” Demand and Rates Taylor observed that the firm saw “all across all of our industry sectors … almost double-digit growth for demand," specifically naming the life sciences, financial services, education, technology, gaming and energy sectors as particularly active for the firm. Meanwhile, terms of regions, Texas, California and the firm's East Coast offices—including New York, Philadelphia, Delaware and South Florida—were strong contributors to the firm’s results. Taylor also highlighted the firm’s deliberate strategy to not rely too heavily upon a small number of clients for work. The firm’s top client, he said, made up less than 5% of its revenue; at the same time, Taylor continued, the firm has “significantly increased” the number of clients with which it does $5 million or more in business. “A strength of our firm is the fact that we’re not overconcentrated in one huge client. We have a very large client base, we have some large clients, and we’re doing more for those clients, but we don’t have a dominant client that is 10% or even 5% of our revenue,” Taylor explained. “We don’t have a concentration in one or two clients, or even three clients, really, across the board or across our practice groups, and that’s a very healthy thing for a firm our size.” In line with a common theme for 2025 law firm performance, rate increases played a key role in driving Duane Morris’ success. Taylor estimated that rates across the firm increased by between 8% and 10%, and the firm’s realization rate remained around 92%, allowing it to capture those increases. “I still believe one of our value propositions is where we are in the food chain, which still allows us to be nimble on rates. We have some lower rates than maybe an Am Law 30 firm, but we’re able to get our rates up and they’re sticking,” Taylor said. “Our clients are very happy to pay for our work.” Further compounding the firm’s financial results, Taylor said, was a dip in expenses. The firm made large capital investments in technology and administrative hires in fiscal year 2024 that didn’t carry over into 2025, helping cut costs and increasing the firm’s bottom line. Efficiency, Headcount Shifts and Future Growth Duane Morris’ total lawyer headcount decreased by a net of four attorneys, or 0.5%, resting at 741.6 full-time equivalent attorneys in 2025. Underlying that figure, however, were larger dips across both partnership tiers: the firm’s equity partner headcount shrank by 7.3%, from 130.9 to 121.3 equity partners, while the nonequity tier shrank by 2.2% from 255.6 to 250 equity partners. Duane Morris’s net headcount decrease combined with its financial performance translated into larger jumps in revenue per lawyer and profits per equity partner. The firm’s RPL grew by 9.9% between 2024 and 2025, going from $931,000 to $1.02 million, while the firm’s PEP grew by 22.3% from $1.37 million to $1.68 million. Still, Taylor said, the firm hired 20 new partners and 57 associates in the course of 2025, and the firm’s emphasis on efficiency further drove its financial success. “The head count change to me was extremely de minimis and minor, but it showed some real good organizational strength, good management and really an eye on being as efficient as possible to set us up for some more growth in the future, which we are keenly trying to do,” Taylor said. Looking ahead at 2026, Taylor indicated he expected demand to remain hot across the firm’s practice groups. Thus far into the year Taylor observed a “major uptick” in litigation, including patent litigation and employment class actions, and corporate work. Taylor also spoke to the firm’s future growth plans, highlighting New York, Chicago, Texas, South Florida and Northern California as key growth markets. Internationally, Taylor continued, the firm is looking to grow actively in London and Singapore; the firm is not planning to expand its overseas footprint, however, and foreign practice growth will focus primarily on corporate, transactional and international arbitration and disputes practices. The 2025 financial figures reported in this story are preliminary. ALM will report finalized data for the Am Law 200 on The American Lawyer in April and May.