Mayer Brown Grew Revenue About 10% in Year of 'Repositioning'

In a year of a revamped lateral strategy, scaling in cities such as London and Asia, and increased emphasis on particular products and industries, Mayer Brown grew revenue by nearly 10%, to $2.17 billion. Average profits per partner also grew by 14.5%, to $3.196 million, even as the firm increased its equity tier by 4.1%, to about 239.

Amid a slight decline in lawyer headcount, the Chicago-founded firm also grew revenue per lawyer by 11.6%, to $1.25 million, and net income by 19.2%, to $762.5 million, with practices like finance, energy, infrastructure and insurance seeing particular strength, said firm chair Jon Van Gorp.

“We’re sustaining demand, but also repositioning the platform in a way that we think can have long-term success and durability,” he said in an interview this week.

Van Gorp said the firm’s financial metrics numbers came through with a mix of demand and billing rate increases, among other things. Mayer Brown grew rates by more than 10%, similar to the previous year, though the firm actually billed fewer total hours last year than in 2024 (around 2.8 million last year and 2.91 million the year before). But Van Gorp said some of that had to do with the firm becoming more targeted, focusing on lateral talent in places like leveraged finance and private credit, insurance, energy, infrastructure, capital markets and white collar work, and intentionally narrowing its client list some.

The firm billed 7,600 clients in 2024 and 6,316 in 2025.

“That’s a concerted effort by us to go deeper with fewer clients, and that’s a byproduct of focusing on the products and industries where we think we can execute strategically,” Van Gorp said. He said he doesn’t have a “magic number” in mind for the number of clients; that the year-to-year movement in the data could be noisy; and that this year, the number of clients Mayer Brown does work for could even go back up. “But generally speaking, we’re trying to narrow our client list and do more work for [existing] clients,” he added.

He pointed to the firm’s performance in London as particularly strong. The office now has about 264 lawyers there, Van Gorp said, and it saw year-over-year revenue growth of roughly 20%, alongside lateral success in structured finance and private credit. In Asia, the firm had scaled back in Hong Kong, but has grown in places like Singapore and Tokyo. Van Gorp said while the Hong Kong office is down to 21 lawyers, the attorney headcount in Singapore is 41, and in Tokyo, it’s 13. He called Asia “a very big bright spot for us,” saying the lawyers there are “really connected with the rest of the platform, and doing a really good job across the world.”

The growth in digital economy infrastructure, like data centers, WiFi networks, and fiber optics, coupled with traditional infrastructure like toll roads and bridges, provided a boost for the firm. Similarly, insurance has “always been a really strong brand for us,” Van Gorp said, and it’s projected to keep growing, with insurance companies becoming asset as well as liability managers. “And the asset managers are very finance-oriented,” he said, adding, “That’s a nice connection point to the strength we have as a firm.”

In litigation, the firm has represented clients such as Spotify in copyright infringement litigation; U.S. Steel in its challenge to a blocked merger with Nippon Steel, and has represented the Big Ten Conference, for years, most recently in an antitrust class action settlement related to name, image and likeness benefits for athletes that resulted in billions of dollars in back damages and significant changes to collegiate athletics.

On the deal side, it advised on the close of the $11 billion SR400 Express Lanes toll road project in Atlanta, and represented Standard Chartered Bank as senior lender in its clean energy infrastructure financing joint venture with Apollo.

Van Gorp said while the firm is “always open-minded” when it comes to opportunities like law firm mergers, they’re more likely to focus on growing the way they have in the recent past. “Right now, we’re pretty focused on executing our strategy that involves acquiring talent through teams of lawyers, like we did last year and already this year, and building the firm that way,” he said, adding that they could “potentially” look at something like a smaller-firm acquisition as well “when it makes sense and we can maintain the culture we have.”

Mayer Brown will look to continue growing in Texas, he said, adding that plans for growth in the Middle East may have to take a bit of a backseat given the recent volatility in the region. “If you’d asked me a month ago, I would’ve been more focused on expansion in the Middle East,” Van Gorp said, adding there’s still “a great opportunity,” particularly because of the firm’s focus on energy and infrastructure and private funds. He added: “If this conflict resolves fairly quickly and people are back on the same trend they were last year, I could see that developing into something for us.”

Reprinted with permission from the March 25th edition of The American Lawyer © 2026 ALM Properties, Inc. All rights reserved. Further duplication without permission is prohibited.