Large law firms saw a “historic” surge in demand last year as a bounce back in transactional work helped push law firm profits to new heights. But litigation, which has seen steady growth post-pandemic, was once again a key driver in law firms’ overall success.

That’s according to the “2025 Report on the State of the U.S. Legal Market” published last week by the Thomson Reuters Institute and the Center on Ethics and the Legal Profession at Georgetown Law. Here’s how the report’s authors encapsulated the state of play:

To be sure, law firm demand has seen a historic growth surge, with the average law firm experiencing growth in demand of 2.6% in 2024. For the large law firm industry, this is incredibly atypical, as firms in that category averaged 0.1% annual demand growth from 2007 to 2023. The level of demand growth seen in 2024 is comparable only to the pandemic-era bounce back from historic lows, when law firm demand grew 3.7% on average in 2021. This growth was, however, measuring from the collapse of demand that defined 2020, in contrast to 2024 which is measuring on top of 2023’s already strong growth. In other words, the 2024 demand performance is far stronger and more real than 2021’s bounce back.
The report draws data from 183 U.S.-based law firms, including 51 Am Law 100 firms, 52 in the Second Hundred and 80 midsize firms that fall outside the Am Law 200. Among that cohort, litigation demand grew 3.3% in 2024 after seeing 2.8% growth in 2023—a year when litigation accounted for 27% of all demand at the surveyed firms.