The 2025 Am Law 200 Rankings: It Was A Very Good Year

Thanks to comebacks from firms like Boies Schiller and Cahill Gordon, the Second Hundred outpaced the Am Law 100 in certain financial metrics.

(stock photo by ericsphotography via Getty Images)

When industry observers make predictions about the future of Biglaw, it’s common to hear something like this: “Giant global firms with billions of dollars in revenue and dozens of offices around the world, like Kirkland & Ellis or Latham & Watkins, will be fine. So will smaller, more specialized, super-elite firms, like Cravath or Wachtell Lipton. But firms in the middle—lacking the scale of Kirkland or Latham, or the cachet of Cravath or Wachtell—are in trouble.”

This can certainly be true on an anecdotal level, as to individual firms. As I recently discussed, an unusually high number of Am Law 200 firms have announced or closed mergers in the past year—and some of the smaller shops in these combinations entered into deals because their prospects as independent firms were doubtful.

But taken as a group, big but not behemoth firms continue to do just fine. And I’m guessing this will continue to be true for quite some time.

Consider the firms that The American Lawyer refers to as the “Second Hundred,” the nation’s #101 to #200 firms ranked by revenue—the firms right behind the more famous Am Law 100. Based on the 2025 Am Law 200 rankings, we’re talking about firms ranging from Dorsey & Whitney (#101), with $513 million in revenue and 550 lawyers, to Herrick Feinstein (#200), with $136 million in revenue and 140 lawyers.

These firms are an order of magnitude smaller than the largest Am Law 100 firms, such as Kirkland, with $8.8 billion in revenue and almost 4,000 lawyers, or Latham, with $7 billion in revenue and more than 3,500 lawyers. At the same time, they’re closer to the Kirklands and Lathams of the world—in terms of their client bases, business models, and partnership structures—than they are to firms with a dozen or two dozen lawyers, based out of one office, with a single practice area focused on individual rather than corporate clients (e.g., criminal defense, family/matrimonial, or personal injury law).

(A digression: how do we define “Biglaw”? It can be challenging at the margins, and I’d argue that there’s no bright-line rule. I don’t think that being in the Am Law 200 or the NLJ 500, the nation’s 500 largest firms based on headcount, automatically qualifies a firm as Biglaw; while the firms at the top of these rankings are undoubtedly Biglaw firms, the firms at the bottom are often better described as midsize or regional firms. I welcome readers’ thoughts in the comments.)

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The 2025 Am Law 200 rankings are based on 2024 financial performance—and last year, the Second Hundred did quite well for themselves, based on multiple metrics:

• Total revenue: $27.8 billion, up 10.9 percent.

• Revenue per lawyer (RPL): $849,860, up 8.6 percent.

• Profits per equity partner (PPEP): $1.1 million, up 12.6 percent.

• Total headcount: 32,703, up 2.1 percent.

How does the group’s 2024 performance compare to 2023? Quite favorably: in 2023, the Second Hundred grew total revenue by 5.9 percent, RPL by 0.8 percent, PPEP by 1.4 percent, and headcount by 5.1 percent. So this discussion from Patrick Smith’s 2025 rankings write-up is right on the money:

Last year, industry experts pointed to the comparatively lower profitability metrics of the Second Hundred and described it as an “investment story,” where those firms sacrificed short-term profitability for longer-term success through investments in talent, scale, technology, and business expertise. This year, those experts say it is the harvest.

Just look at the numbers. In 2023, the Second Hundred grew headcount at a decent clip (5.1 percent), but PPEP barely budged (1.4 percent)—reflecting the reality that investment, including the hiring of additional lawyers, can be a drag on profits in the short term. In 2024, the Second Hundred grew half as slowly in terms of headcount (2.1 percent)—but PPEP increased by double digits (12.6 percent), as they reaped the rewards of their investments from 2023.

And how did the Second Hundred’s performance compare to their Am Law 100 rivals? In 2024, the Am Law 100 collectively grew revenue by 13.3 percent, RPL by 5.2 percent, and PPEP by 12.3 percent—so the Second Hundred actually outpaced the Am Law 100 in terms of increasing RPL (by 8.6 percent) and PPEP (by 12.6 percent), which is unusual.

But the Am Law 100 grew headcount by 7.7 percent in 2024, compared to the Second Hundred’s headcount increase of 2.1 percent. Combined with the RPL and PPEP metrics, this suggests that the two groups might have switched places last year: the Second Hundred took gains in 2024, while the Am Law 100 invested in the future.

Now let’s look at some individual firms. They include two “comeback kids,” one a litigation powerhouse and the other a force in finance, whose futures were called into question at various points over the past few years—but who did very well for themselves in 2024, and appear to be back in growth mode.

Because the Am Law 200 is a revenue-based ranking, let’s start with that metric. Here are the first 10 firms in the Second Hundred, i.e., the firms ranked #101 to #110 in gross revenue (for the full list, plus lots of other interesting data, check out The American Lawyer):