Recent growth in the New York City legal market

28 January 2025

Using publicly-available data from Pirical Legal Professionals (PLP), we've taken a look at New York City's Partner headcount growth and lateral market activity over the last 12 months to which firms and practices have been growing in the Big Apple.

Partner headcount growth 📈

The highest growth firms are a mixture of AM Law 100 and UK headquartered firms

UK firm Freshfields tops the list with +36% Partner headcount growth in 2024, with Linklaters (+22%) also significantly increasing NYC headcount.

Banking & Finance practices have had some of the highest increases in headcount

Banking, Finance and Corporate related practices in NYC have seen the highest rates of Partner growth in the last 12 months.

Practices with the sharpest increases in headcount have been driven by a handful of firms; Financial Regulation (Norton Rose Fulbright, Freshfields, Sullivan & Cromwell) and Corporate (Kirkland & Ellis, Willkie Farr & Gallagher, Loeb & Loeb).

Lateral market activity 🤝

The AM Law 50 dominate lateral Partner hires in New York City and increased hiring in 2024

The top 50 firms make more than double the number of lateral Partner hires than the AM Law 51-100 or 101-200. Firms ranked 1-50 also increased the number of lateral NYC hires they made by +23% in 2024, compared to +7% from the second 50 and -9% from the second hundred.

Demand for lateral Partners working in Investment Funds increased in 2024

The number of Investment Funds hires in NYC grew by +53%, compared to 2023. Kirkland & Ellis (+14), Simpson Thacher & Bartlett (+11) and Paul, Weiss (+7) have increased their Partner numbers in this practice area the most.

Despite increases in a couple of sub-specialisms of Litigation, Litigation as a whole, saw lateral hiring drop by -34%, alongside Capital Markets (-37%).

Kirkland & Ellis and Paul Hastings made the most lateral Partner hires

The firms most active in the NYC lateral Partner market are from the top end of the AM Law rankings.

Written using publicly-available data from Pirical Legal Professionals (PLP)

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