According to the financial numbers from American Lawyer’s top 100 list, 2007 was one of the best years on record for law firms in the United States. Both the benchmarks for revenue per lawyer, and profit per partner increased substantially.

Going back to 2003, the average increase for revenue per lawyer has been $205,000. Prior to 2003, it took firms ten times as long to improve that much. This is even more evident in the profit per partner benchmark, which has jumped by $438,000 since 2003 to an average of $1.3 million.

The recent increases are largely due to a rapidly growing demand for high-end legal services and constant annual rate hikes. Also a relative lack of new equity partners being named, since 2001 has helped to inflate these numbers only increasing by 2.6 percent on average, or about five new partners.

Total revenues for 2007 hit $64.5 billion, increasing by 13.6 percent from 2006. With both Skaden, Arps, and Latham & Watkins topping $2 billion revenue. The total number of lawyers in the top 100 grew by 6.8 percent totaling 77,816 lawyers. New York maintains it’s dominance of the industry, with an average revenue per lawyer of $1.1 million, while the average for firms not in New York was around $780,000.

There is some speculation that the industry may be facing a downturn in the near future, with indicators pointing to weakness. For the first time since the recession in 2001, the growth of head count has surpassed the growth in RPL noticeably.

You can view the  list in it’s entirety on AmericanLawyer.com, we’ll be discussing it more here as well in the coming days/weeks.

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