Revenue at Paul Hastings rose 20% to $2.68 billion last year, accelerating a growth streak propelled by hiring partners from competing law firms.
The value of one of the firm’s partnership shares rose nearly 21% last year to just over $653,000. That figure (which is different than profits per equity partner) has more than doubled since Paul Hastings’ fiscal 2020, according to data from the firm. Partners are granted shares based on their performance, but a rising share value means they are earning more even if they aren’t being granted more shares.
The firm has added a raft of M&A, finance, restructuring, and litigation partners in the three-plus years since Frank Lopez took over as chair. Its notable hires last year include a litigation leader from Cravath Swaine & Moore, a public companies M&A partner from Kirkland & Ellis, and a slew of arrivals from Latham & Watkins.
The investments have bolstered financial performance, the firm’s leaders say, and raised its reputation in the market.
“It was a phenomenal year,” Lopez said in an interview. “We’re taking a lot of market share at the top.”
The firm’s top-line growth eclipsed its competitors’ averages. Revenue at the country’s 25 largest firms, a group that includes Paul Hastings, last year rose by an average of 14.1%, according to data from Citi’s law firm banking group. Paul Hastings’ annual revenue and profit figures refer to its fiscal year, which ended Jan. 31.
Lopez and Sherrese Smith, the firm’s managing partner, said Paul Hastings saw strong demand growth throughout the year across its transactional and litigation practices.
The firm’s lawyers advised on more than $250 billion worth of global deals last year, good for 13th among law firms, according to Bloomberg’s League Tables. It was the first time Paul Hastings cracked the top 20 in at least a decade.
Read More: Big Law’s Top 20 M&A Dealmakers
The firm’s restructuring practice was retained on 36 creditor-side engagements last year, second-most behind Gibson Dunn, according to data from market-tracking service Octus. Its bank-side and lender-side finance practice also received high rankings in various league tables.
Paul Hastings has been investing in its litigation practice, having grown its headcount of litigators by more than 20% from the beginning of 2024 to the end of the third quarter last year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg Law. That was the fourth-largest jump among the 50 largest firms by revenue.
“We’ve always had a very robust litigation department, but we knew it was going to be important to dig deep” in areas like complex litigation and antitrust to win mandates from boards of directors, Smith said in an interview.
The firm has focused its growth efforts in recent years on New York, London, and Texas. Its revenue in New York has grown $550 million to $1.1 billion over the last three years, the firm said. The London office revenue has roughly doubled to about $250 million during the same time, according to the firm. Its Texas operation pulled in around $100 million last year.
The London office experienced some churn last year, including the departures of high-ranking lawyers. Mei Lian, a corporate and structured finance partner who served as its London co-chair, in August left for Linklaters and tax partner Arun Birla, a former chair of its London office, bolted for White & Case three months later.
The firm responded late in the year, hiring at least four partners in London in November and bringing aboard a Simpson Thacher funds partner this month.
In New York, the firm last month hired former Cravath Swaine & Moore partner John Buretta to serve as co-chair of its litigation department.
Lopez and Smith last year were re-elected for another three-year term running through the end of 2028. They have said the firm’s longer-term goal is to raise its profit margin to 60%, a level matched only by a few elite firms. Smith said the firm’s margin now stands at 57%.
Paul Hastings has drawn attention with its splashy hiring strategy. It has hired between 30 and 50 lateral partners in recent years.
The scale of its hiring stands out compared to the 50 largest firms by revenue. Paul Hastings hired more than 140 partners since the start of 2023, according to data from Sure Point Legal Systems, formerly known as Leopard Solutions. That was the fourth most among the 50 largest firms, even as Paul Hastings had 600 fewer total lawyers than any of the law firms that had hired more partners.
Lopez, who joined from Proskauer in 2019, has long argued the hires will raise the firm’s profile in industry rankings, specifically those granted by research and rankings outfit Chambers & Partners—which is now paying off.
“We’re now five years running here meaningfully outperforming the market and we’re just getting started,” Lopez said. “We don’t see any indications of slowing down this year.”
To contact the reporter on this story:
To contact the editors responsible for this story: