Linklaters has pushed revenue and partner profits to new record highs, with double-digit growth across all key financial metrics for 2024-25.
The magic circle firm grew its top line by 11% over the year to reach £2.32bn, up from last year’s £2.1bn, while profit per equity partner (PEP) climbed 15% from £1.9m to £2.2m, marking the first time it has exceeded the £2m threshold.
Pre-tax profit also set a new benchmark, breaking the £1bn mark for the first time, with a 14% increase from £942m to £1.08bn.
Managing partner Paul Lewis told Legal Business that the results were ‘testament to the fact that we’re heading in the right direction’.
‘I’m very pleased with the results, not just because of the numbers, but because the mandates behind them are clear evidence that our strategy is working,’ he said. ‘They show momentum – the line I had with the partnership was “the best is yet to come”.’
While the firm declined to provide a breakdown of revenue by geography, it reported profit growth across all core markets, with US profits up by 57% and Asia up 13%, alongside single-digit growth for Europe (3%) and the UK (8%).
Stateside growth has been a key priority for Linklaters, and since May 2024, 13 of the firm’s 27 lateral hires have been in the US.
Lewis pointed to the impact of the January 2024 hire of a New York M&A team led by former Shearman & Sterling global managing partner George Casey, who has since been appointed as the firm’s first chairman of the Americas.
‘Meaningfully, we’ve been growing since last January when George and the team came on board,’ said Lewis. ‘We wanted to start that real, transformational big bang with M&A. We’re absolutely blue ribbon M&A globally – we’ve got a brilliant global corporate client base. We need to be on the US side of those big global deals, and George and the team have been fantastic on that front.’
On US profits, Lewis described the the 57% growth figure as ‘slightly misleading’.
‘It actually understates the full picture – it reflects only the US profit and loss and doesn’t capture the global impact; the multiplier effect of bringing top-tier teams on board, driving cross-border, cross-practice work’, he explained. ‘It’s a material increase on what was already a strong year for the US last year.’
Other key recent additions for the firm in the US have included a four-partner finance team led by the former global co-head of A&O Shearman’s financial markets practice David Lucking, a four-partner litigation team from New York boutique Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler, and, most recently, capital markets and M&A partner Kristina Trauger, who joined from Proskauer Rose, where she co-headed the capital markets group.
Further notable additions around the world have included the hire of an eight-lawyer team from French firm Darrois Villey Maillot Brochier in Paris, led by François Kopf, who joined as global chair of restructuring and insolvency.
The year also saw the firm scale back in the CEE region, with its 80-lawyer Poland office transferring to Addleshaw Goddard.
Lewis picked out energy as a key area of activity for the firm: ‘We’ve seen a huge amount of activity globally across sectors related to energy, infrastructure and digital infrastructure. On the pure energy side, the energy transition continues to drive interest, including in areas like carbon capture and storage. Tech remains important too, but energy has probably been the single biggest driver.’
That focus has been reflected in the firm’s corporate mandates, including advising Dow on its $6bn partnership with Macquarie Asset Management to launch Diamond Infrastructure Solutions, Volkswagen on its $5.8bn investment and joint venture with Rivian, and Rio Tinto on its $6.7bn acquisition of Arcadium Lithium.
On the capital markets front, the firm advised the underwriters on the largest global tech IPO in 2024, Talabat Holding’s $2bn Dubai listing, and the largest global IPO of 2025, CATL’s $5.3bn Hong Kong debut.
Lewis and senior partner Aedamar Comiskey were re-elected to their respective posts this June, with both of their terms now running until 2029, and Lewis said that the re-election marked an endorsement of their vision from the partnership.
‘The strategy is really clear: we want to accentuate the work we do for the world’s leading corporates, banks, funds and financial sponsors. We want to focus on the complex, the cross-border, the high-profile work. We’ve got our priority areas, and they’re doing very well.’
