A clutch of US firms have recorded double-digit financial growth for 2024 after a strong 12 months for the Stateside elite now reckoning with the upheaval of President Trump’s return to office.
While the impact of Trump’s sweeping tariffs, executive orders against major firms and crackdown on diversity policies have made for a bumpy start to 2025, the financial results for 2024 to have emerged so far present a much more positive picture.
Simpson Thacher was among the firms that saw both revenue and PEP rise by double digits, according to reporting from law.com, with revenue rising 24% to $2.9bn and profit per equity partner surging 19% to $7.66m.
The New York-headquartered firm built out its leveraged finance bench in London last year, hiring Legal 500 acquisition finance next-generation partner Dan Peach from Linklaters in November and leveraged finance partners Bryan Robson and William Gwyn from Sidley Austin in December, with the latter co-head of Sidley’s leveraged finance practice.
Major matters handled by the firm during 2024 included acting for KKR on its establishment of a joint venture with T-Mobile for the $4.9bn acquisition of Metronet, as well as advising Blackstone on its $1.7bn bid for Japanese digital comics company Infocom.
The US firm also recently opened an office in Luxembourg with a trio of hires from A&O Shearman and Clifford Chance.
Meanwhile, Gibson Dunn generated $3.6bn in revenue in 2024, up nearly 16% on 2023’s figure, while PEP soared by more than 28% to $7.2m.
An active 2024 saw the firm add London laterals including restructuring partner Lisa Stevens from Freshfields in January, former Linklaters leveraged finance co-head David Irvine in April, private equity partner Will Summers from White & Case in September, and M&A partner Will McDonald from Jones Day at the end of the year.
New London office heads Rob Carr and Osma Hudda, who were installed at the beginning of the year, told LB they plan to continue to grow the firm’s litigation and transactional practices in the City.
Elsewhere, Paul Hastings has seen its top line rise to $2.2bn, up 23% from last year, while PEP hit $6.7m in an increase of nearly 25%.
The firm continued to grow in 2025, hiring White & Case infrastructure partners George Kazakov and Din Eshanov last month, with Eshanov brought in to co-head the firm’s new office in Abu Dhabi.
It also added three significant laterals from Weil last year, with Shawn Kodes joining the New York office as co-chair of asset-backed finance in April, and banking and finance partner Reena Gogna and structured finance specialist Brian Maher joining in London in June and August respectively.
Among other US firms, Perkins Coie saw more modest revenue growth, with its top line rising 4% to approximately $1.26bn, with PEP up by 16% to $1.9m.
The Seattle-based firm also generated around $830,000 (£650,000) in revenue from its London office during the year, according to law.com reporting. The base opened in May 2024 with the eye-catching hire of former White & Case private equity chief Ian Bagshaw, who returned to law as Perkins Coie’s London managing partner after leaving White & Case in 2021.
More recently, the firm has found itself at the centre of the Trump administration’s escalating battle with big law, opting to litigate to fight the 6 March executive order issued against it rather than cutting a deal with the president as firms including Paul Weiss and Skadden have done.
The firm’s legal fight against the executive order has received the support of over 500 firms, including Freshfields, who signed onto a legal brief in support of the action last week.
Elsewhere, Orrick saw an increase of nearly 9% in revenue to $1.59bn, while PEP jumped nearly 17% to $3.63m.
The San Francisco-bred firm hired the former head of legacy Shearman & Sterling’s Italian M&A practice, Fabio Fauceglia, in May last year. Fauceglia joined with a team of six lawyers including of counsel Leonardo Pinta and five associates. The head of legacy Kramer Levin’s life sciences practice Irena Royzman also joined the firm’s New York office last April, several months before Kramer announced its plans to combine with Herbert Smith Freehills.
Finally, Chicago-bred Mayer Brown saw revenue nudge up by just under 4% to hit $1.98bn, with PEP up over 14% to $2.8m.
In London, the firm hired tax partner Sam Riesenberg from KPMG’s Washington National Tax practice last April, and corporate and securities partner Ross Montgomery from Dechert in November.
It also shuttered its Mexico City office at the end of October, ending a nine-year presence in the city.
With US firms averaging a 6.5% increase in billing rates last year according to the Thomson Reuters Institute’s 2025 Report on the State of the US Legal Market, the fastest acceleration since the global financial crisis, the healthy figures are perhaps no surprise.
Thomson Reuters data also show the average US law firm experienced a 2.6% increase in demand last year. A figure that, when placed against the average increase of 0.1% in annual demand growth from 2007 to 2023, also helps to explain why 2024 was such a strong year for the legal sector.
