The 20 Most Prestigious Law Firms In America (2025)

Did fighting or folding to Trump get reflected in the new Vault 100 ranking?

Outside Covington & Burling’s D.C. headquarters (photo by David Lat).

Welcome to Original Jurisdiction, the latest legal publication by me, David Lat. You can learn more about Original Jurisdiction by reading its About page, and you can email me at davidlat@substack.com. This is a reader-supported publication; you can subscribe by clicking here.

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What will be the long-term consequences for law firms of either suing or settling with the Trump administration? Critics of the administration would like to see virtue rewarded and vice punished: suing firms should gain clients and recruits, while settling firms should lose them. But even though we have a few initial data points, I think it’s too early to say how this will all shake out.

Here’s one area where we don’t see any Trump-related changes just yet: the Vault 100, an annual ranking of the nation’s most prestigious law firms. And this makes perfect sense, when you take a closer look at Vault’s methodology.

The Vault rankings—plural because there are a whole host of rankings, including the best firms to work for, the best firms for diversity and inclusion, and the best firms in different practice areas and regions—are based on surveys completed by 20,000 associates. For the 2026 Vault rankings—Vault is always (confusingly) ahead of the calendar by a year—the survey window opened on January 28 and closed on March 21, 2025.

March 21 fell only a day after the world learned of the first Trump/Biglaw settlement, the deal cut by Paul Weiss. And while many lawyers are procrastinators, I’m guessing the vast majority of Vault surveys were submitted before this news broke. So as Staci Zaretsky pointed out on Above the Law, we’ll have to wait until next year’s Vault rankings to see the reputational consequences of fighting or folding to Trump.

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Here are the top 10 firms in the latest Vault 100 ranking, with changes in rank from last year noted parenthetically (“—” means no change):

1. Cravath Swaine & Moore (—)
2. Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz (—)
3. Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom (—)
4. Latham & Watkins (—)
5. Kirkland & Ellis (+1)
6. Sullivan & Cromwell (-1)
7. Davis Polk & Wardwell (—)
8. Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison (—)
9. Milbank (+4)
10. Simpson Thacher & Bartlett (-1)

Reputations are formed over long periods of time, so it’s not surprising that prestige is, as economists like to say, “sticky.” Nine out of the top 10 firms were in the top 10 last year, and six out of the top 10 didn’t even change their rank—including the Holy Trinity of Cravath, Wachtell, and Skadden. In fact, 2025 marks the tenth year in a row that these three firms have been #1, #2, and #3—ever since Cravath ended Wachtell’s 13-year reign at the top, back in 2016.

The one newcomer to the top 10 this year was Milbank, which climbed four spots from #13 to #9. As noted by Vault, Milbank was the first firm to announce special bonuses in summer 2024 and (generous) associate bonuses in late 2024. This came after Milbank rose from #17 to #13 in the prior year—so in the span of two years, Milbank moved up eight ranks.

In 2023, Milbank fell six places—after having gone up by 12 in 2022, thanks to leading a Biglaw pay raise in January of that year. So its rank can be volatile, and it will be interesting to see if stays in the top 10 in the 2027 Vault rankings. But there’s no disputing that regardless of year-to-year fluctuations, Milbank is now in a different league since becoming a leader rather than a follower on associate compensation. As Maria Ho observed in her own write-up of this year’s Vault 100 ranking, Milbank was #40 in the Vault 100 in 2019, only six years ago—and now it’s in the top 10.

Elsewhere in the top 10, Kirkland & Ellis and Sullivan & Cromwell switched places, with K&E going up to #5 and S&C going down to #6, and Simpson Thacher dropped a spot to #10. As I’ve mentioned before, I view moves of less than three ranks in the Vault 100 to be pretty immaterial, so I wouldn’t read too much into these changes.

It’s striking that six out of the top 10 firms reached settlements with the Trump administration: Skadden, Latham, Kirkland, Paul Weiss, Milbank, and Simpson. Don’t be surprised if these firms fall in the Vault 2027 ranking. I’m not aware of any polling of Biglaw associates for their views on the Trump deals, but in my anecdotal observation, most associates reacted negatively. So I could see these associates voting down the settling firms in Vault surveys, either because they genuinely hold these firms in lower esteem, for “capitulating,” or because of “protest voting”—e.g., ranking Paul Weiss ridiculously low, like #100, as a kind of “FU” to Brad Karp.

Now let’s look at the rest of the top 20, before turning to the biggest gainers and losers in the entire Vault 100. I include my own color commentary on these moves and their significance, which is quite detailed—likely to be appreciated only by hard-core Biglaw nerds. (I was going to apologize for all the “inside baseball,” but then I thought to myself, “Who am I kidding? This is exactly why people read Original Jurisdiction.”)

Here are the firms ranked #11 to #20 in the 2026 Vault 100: