‘Historically Boston was a very insular market’, says Andrew Sucoff (pictured right), chair of Goodwin’s Boston office. ‘There weren’t a lot of lateral moves. That was true across the industry, but it was particularly true in Boston.’

Now, the market is changing. In Sucoff’s words: ‘What was acceptable in New York, London, and other major metropolitan areas in terms of lateral hiring started to become more acceptable in Boston. Once that happened, other firms who saw Boston as an attractive market started to establish beachheads.’

Boston is, unquestionably, on the up. No fewer than five leading law firms opened offices in the city across 2024 and 2025, with Paul Hastings launching in April 2024, Simpson Thacher and Blank Rome in May, Freshfields in February 2025, and Fenwick & West in April this year.

‘Boston is a popular location for firms to open new offices’, says Brown Rudnick transactions partner John Cushing, ‘Many times, those new offices are led by and staffed, initially, with lawyers from other firms already established in Boston. A number of well-known local and regional firms have been acquired by national players.’

According to data provider Leopard Solutions, there were a total of 97 partner hires into AmLaw 100 firms in Boston in 2024 – a 73% increase on the previous year’s tally of 56 hires, and nearly double 2022’s figure of 49.

‘Compared to New York or the Bay Area, Boston is still underpenetrated’ – Wesley Holmes, Latham

Wesley Holmes (pictured right), Boston managing partner at Latham & Watkins, which became an early new entrant in 2011 when it saw the opportunity to bring its global offering to the city, believes there is still more room for growth from international firms.

‘There were a number of historically Boston-based firms that had been around for 100-plus years that really dominated the market’  he says in reference to how the city legal market used to look before insisting that  ‘compared to New York or the Bay Area, Boston is still underpenetrated in the legal market.’

On partner numbers alone, the data bears his point out. While partner recruitment has increased dramatically in recent years, Boston saw significantly fewer lateral hires into top 100 firms in 2024 than Chicago (142 hires) and Los Angeles (123), not to mention the larger markets of Washington DC (291) and New York (449 hires).

However, Boston has seen far faster growth than any of these other markets. Alongside Washington DC it was the only city in that group where lateral partner hires did not dip at least once in the years between 2022 and 2024.

The reason for the new interest from international firms comes down to what Sucoff refers to as Boston’s reputation for ‘eds, meds, and finances’.

He explains: ‘There are 44 colleges and universities in the greater Boston area, as well as 22 full-service inpatient hospitals. We have the Route 128 corridor, which is called the Silicon Valley of the East, so we also have an incredible tech sector. And we have the largest life science cluster in the world, by almost any way of measuring.

‘The colleges and universities work with the medical schools in a symbiotic relationship. Then there’s the city’s active financial services sector, which provides funding for companies in tech and life sciences, whether those companies are startups or further along in their life cycle.’

The history

Proskauer chair Tim Mungovan (pictured right) says: ‘What makes Boston such a good market is that it has a very stable knowledge-based economy. It has world-class educational institutions, all clustered in a small geographic area, with extraordinary graduate schools, including law schools, engineering schools, and business schools.

‘In the 1980s it was an economy very much focused on banking and mutual funds, which according to legend were developed and initiated in Boston, and it was also at the forefront of the computer revolution. In the 1990s there was a strong push towards private equity and venture capital, and in the 2000s that focus on capital management shifted to hedge funds and private capital, and Boston became, if not as big as New York, a credible rival to New York.’

But while this economic backdrop made Boston attractive to law firms, new entrants still lacked the opportunity to establish themselves in the market. For Proskauer, which launched in Boston in 2004, this opportunity came via  the collapse of local firm Testa, Hurwitz & Thibeault.

‘Testa Hurwitz was focused on what we can call the internet economy version 1.0, and was therefore very exposed when the dot-com bubble burst in 2001’, says Mungovan. The firm also suffered succession issues after the untimely 2002 death of founding partner Dick Testa, with the combination enough to provoke a growing exodus of partners.

‘With the rise of private capital, Boston became a credible rival to New York’ – Tim Mungovan, Proskauer

‘Proskauer originally recruited an IP and patent litigation team that was intended to be an extension of our IP practice in New York’, says Mungovan, referring to the 2004 hires of partners Steven Bauer, Joseph Caprano, and Daniel Bernstein, who launched Proskauer’s office in the city. ‘But as Testa started to disintegrate, a lot of the partners there wanted to speak to us.’

This culminated most notably in Proskauer’s hire of seven private equity partners at the end of 2004, including Robin Painter and David Tegeler, who went on to co-head Proskauer’s private funds group for almost two decades from 2005 through 2023.

The ripples of Testa’s spring 2005 collapse continued to spread, and other new entrants benefited from the firm’s demise. In 2007, for instance, Cooley opened in the city, launching an office with 10 new partners including office co-heads John Hession and Lester Fagen. The partners joined from a range of firms, including McDermott, but all 10 had previously worked at Testa.

But it was not just new firms in the market that benefited. Sucoff comments: ‘About 20 years ago we absorbed 90 lawyers from Testa, which was the leading technology firm in the country. It provided the perfect opportunity for us to launch into the tech space, as well as giving us a big boost in life sciences.’

Among the Testa partners Goodwin brought over in 2005 were current management and executive committee members Mark Bettencourt, who became the firm’s managing partner in 2019, and Carl Metzger, who was named litigation department chair in October 2024.

Other notable Testa alums at the firm include global life sciences chair Mitchell Bloom, technology co-chair Kenneth Gordon, public M&A/corporate governance practice co-chair Deborah Birnbach, and special purpose acquisition companies (SPAC) practice lead Jocelyn Arel.

Testa’s collapse may have done much to shape the Boston legal market of today but other firm failures also played a part. Collapsed financial restructuring firm Bingham McCutchen was unsuccessful in its attempts to achieve a rescue merger with Morgan Lewis in 2014, with the Philadelphia firm instead cherry-picking more than 200 of its partners, including an influx of talent for the Boston office it had launched in 2003. Meanwhile, Burns & Levinson’s wind-down in September 2024 provided the raw material for Blank Rome and Simpson Thacher’s launches in the city.

Looking ahead

As rate increases push the highest-paying global elite firms to focus on only the most profitable work, they are also creating opportunities in the mid market. Michael Scott, co-managing partner of Nutter McClennen & Fish, a Boston-headquartered firm with four offices across the United States, comments: ‘Partners from the AmLaw 50 are interested in our firm, citing resource constraints, bureaucracy, billing rates, and intense focus on driving the highest profit margin. At a firm like ours, there are a lot more opportunities to expand a practice and leverage our entrepreneurial and collaborative platform.’

Russell Beck, co-founding partner at Boston litigation and employment firm Beck Reed Riden, argues that smaller boutique firms are well placed to thrive: ‘Small firms with a specialty are the ones that’ll survive’, he says. ‘Boston really lends itself to boutique firms.’

But whether you are looking at the biggest international firms or the mid-market, some question how much more expansion the Boston legal market can support.

One Boston head at a top 100 firm describes the raft of recent market entrants as making only ‘very nascent efforts’, and expresses doubts over those firms’ abilities to grow in the longer term.

‘The NIH has been a massive contributor to R&D in life sciences. A lot of that funding has now been cut back’ – Andrew Sucoff, Goodwin

There are also warning signs on the demand side, too, with partners reporting a slowdown in real estate in particular.

While higher interest rates impact activity levels across the board, with real estate particularly affected, in Boston there are specific concerns around such work for the once-booming life sciences sector.

‘There’s currently a glut of empty lab space’, says Mungovan. ‘Some companies haven’t grown fast enough to fill the space that they paid for. That’s driven a slowdown in real estate.’

However, Mungovan is not overly concerned: ‘Every industry goes through cycles’, he says, noting that his firm is ‘taking a countercyclical approach’.  ‘We see a tremendous amount of opportunity in investment of all kinds in real assets, whether those assets are digital infrastructure or top-tier office space. What we see in London and New York, we also see in Boston – there is still demand for the premium properties.’

Others though fear that there’s a risk that issues in the life sciences market could be further exacerbated by cuts to federal funding. ‘The National Institute for Health has traditionally been a massive contributor to research and development in life sciences’, says Sucoff. ‘A lot of that funding has now been cut back.’

Goodwin life sciences chair (and Testa alum) Mitch Bloom (pictured below right) expands: ‘The life sciences sector – particularly in Boston – has been navigating a period of short-term uncertainty. Factors like reduced research funding, leadership transitions at the FDA, and proposed federal drug pricing reforms have all contributed to a more cautious investment climate. Additionally, the recent administration’s stance on tariffs and vaccine regulation could potentially further complicate the life sciences landscape.’

On the whole, though, partners have faith that the industry will find a way through, despite any challenges triggered by Trump’s administration. ‘There are other sources of capital that will come in’, says Holmes. ‘There’s a lot of talent here, and dollars tend to find that.’

Bloom takes a similar view: ‘Boston’s ecosystem—bolstered by a deep talent pool, world-class academic institutions, and committed investors—continues to be a global hub for innovation. While regulatory shifts may pose challenges, I believe businesses and investors alike will adapt, and the sector will continue to thrive.’

Holmes concurs: ‘Big pharma moved away from having massive internal R&D programmes and started relying on the broader life sciences ecosphere and emerging companies to be their external R&D. Then when those companies reach a level of maturity that’s attractive, big pharma comes in. That will continue, though it’s possible you’ll see earlier-stage investment from big pharma.’

Sucoff predicts this will lead to ‘consolidation’ – which will benefit the firms best placed to advise larger companies and funds, with private capital set to remain a big driver of work in Boston.

‘There are funds being formed with a ton of dry powder, to come in and buy companies and be rescue capital’, says Sucoff. Meanwhile, Holmes notes a longer-term dynamic whereby, ‘Growth in the [Boston] private equity sector has been similar to that in law firms, with longstanding major players and newer entrants contributing to the expansion.’

Here, as in other financial centres, partners predict that the amount of capital currently held by buyout houses and their need to deploy it and return money to investors will be enough to bring deal activity back.

Simpson Thacher, Paul Hastings and Freshfields are among the firms which have been hiring in private capital partners to meet this demand as a key cornerstone of their respective launches.

To this extent, the situation in Boston echoes that of other key legal markets. Speaking of his firm’s historic growth, Proskauer chair Mungovan concludes: ‘We increasingly focused on what’s now called private capital. That was the rocket fuel – not just for Boston but for the entire firm.’

In Boston, as elsewhere, firms are looking to gain access to that rocket fuel.

For more on Boston, see our coverage of the Legal 500 US elite rankings.

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Firms that opened in Boston 2024-25

*Lawyer and partner numbers from firm website. Accurate at time of publication.