Paul Hastings Spies $2.5 Billion Revenue Goal on Vigorous Hiring

Paul Hastings is on pace to grow revenue 12% this year to more than $2.5 billion, showing the fruits of the firm’s effort to aggressively hire lawyers from rivals.

The firm’s total hours billed are up more than 10% through the first half, firm chairman Frank Lopez said in an interview. Practices including antitrust, litigation, finance, M&A and restructuring are running hot, up more than 30%, he said.

“It is an incredibly strong year for us,” Lopez said. “We continue with our momentum on the financial side.”

Hitting 12% full-year revenue growth would be a healthy rise for the firm in a year that has so far been characterized by challenges to major law firms, including a disappointing transactions market and broader tumult stemming from a handful of operations being targeted by President Donald Trump.

Last year, 17 firms took in more than $2.5 billion in revenue. To hit that figure, Paul Hastings will have roughly doubled its revenue since 2020, when it was the 27th largest US firm by revenue. Last year, it was the 22nd largest, according to data from The American Lawyer.

Still, the increase, if Lopez’s firm can achieve it, would be roughly half the 23% revenue growth Paul Hastings notched from 2023 to 2024. That was one of the stronger recent years across Big Law.

Paul Hastings has been one of the most aggressive firms in recruiting partners from top competitors such as Kirkland & Ellis, Latham & Watkins, and White & Case. The firm has targeted transactional practices such as public company M&A, private equity, and finance, while also building its restructuring and litigation groups.

The hiring surge has made the firm’s financial performance, and the work it’s taking, more closely watched across the industry.

Lopez, who took the reins of the firm in 2022 after joining from Proskauer Rose in 2019, has for years said the firm’s ambitious lateral hiring is an effort to take work away from rivals. Operating in a low-growth industry, he said he sees taking market share from competitors as the main strategy for growth.

“We continue to have the same mantra, which is that we won’t rely on markets,” Lopez said. “Our financial performance has to be driven by demand. And if the markets aren’t there, the only way to drive demand is to take market share. That’s our philosophy in every single practice.”

So far, all of the firm’s 17 practice groups saw total hours billed rise from the previous year, Lopez said. While that could be partly attributed to the firm’s overall headcount growth—it’s now roughly 1,500 lawyers; up from 1,200 just a few years ago—Lopez said the firm’s productivity metrics also rose from last year.

Frank Lopez

Firm handout

The firm’s M&A practice through six months this year has roughly matched the value of deals it advised on all last year, according to Bloomberg data. The firm advised on $71 billion worth of deals last year, and $67 billion worth of deals through last week.

The firm anticipates a stronger presence in the public company M&A space after hiring partner Eric Schiele from Kirkland earlier this year. Schiele had advised on some of the largest public deals in recent years.

Finance Work

Lopez has made a particular effort to bolster the firm’s finance practice, which has made strides in numerous league table rankings.

Its position on the lender-side new money loans table rose to No. 1 by deal count and No. 2 by deal value so far this year, according to Bloomberg data. The firm ranked 10th by deal count in 2023 and fourth last year.

Paul Hastings has also seen major growth in its lender-side leveraged loans practice, a space led for more than a decade by Cahill Gordon & Reindel, which maintained a market share above 30% for years.

Paul Hastings last year ranked second in advising on lender-side new money leveraged loans in the US with an 11% market share, according to Bloomberg data, and maintains the #2 position so far this year with a 16% share of the market—compared to 18% for Cahill. It’s a marked improvement from ranking eighth in 2023 and 13th in 2022.

The firm has made a similar rise in the league tables for European leveraged finance deals, where it ranks third so far this year, Bloomberg data show. It ranked eighth through the full year in 2024.

Paul Hastings’ finance practice in 2022 and 2023 made major hires from Latham & Watkins and Cahill, respectively, and it has continued to bolster the group with hires from Vinson & Elkins, Weil Gotshal & Manges, and more Latham partners.

While most major law firms operate on a so-called “budget” based on the revenue they expect to earn, it’s rare for firms to publicly disclose the figure midway through the year when so much can change in the back half. But Lopez said the firm hasn’t seen any indication of softening demand in its practices going into the next six months of 2025.

“You could still be cautiously optimistic that there could be an uptick in the third or fourth quarter,” he said. “From a demand perspective, we expect it to be relatively consistent because our practices are so diversified.”