Kirkland & Ellis is done showing its numbers.

The world’s biggest law firm by revenue has told The American Lawyer it will no longer share its financials for the industry’s go-to profit and revenue rankings.

The firm said it was no longer “appropriate or necessary” to disclose results, per a letter sent to AmLaw. The firm said disclosure offered clients no “meaningful value” and that rankings “could incentivise quantitative metrics over qualitative strengths”.

Kirkland is bowing out on a high. Gross revenue hit a record US$10.6bn in 2025, up from US$8.8bn. Equity partners pocketed an average US$11.1m, up 20%.

Nobody else is close. Latham & Watkins sits second on US$8.3bn, more than US$2bn back. Third-placed DLA Piper booked US$4.58bn, less than half of Kirkland’s haul.

Kirkland’s 19.93% revenue growth also beat almost the entire top 20. Only Davis Polk (25.98%), Paul Weiss (23.75%) and Simpson Thacher (22.66%) grew faster.

Kirkland’s leadership has reportedly been mulling the move for years, frustrated that AmLaw’s average PEP figure flattens the wide pay gaps inside the firm. It’s also not the first to go quiet, with Freshfields quitting voluntary reporting in 2023. Wachtell and Slaughter and May don’t share theirs either.

But the timing is interesting.

Top partners now earn tens of millions a year, often far more than the clients paying them. A 20% jump in partner profits is a tough number to defend when clients are pushing for lower fees.

Then there’s Kirkland's US$500m AI build. If that AI is supposed to make legal work faster and cheaper, clients will want to see lower bills. Without published numbers, that’s much harder to check.

As one LinkedIn commenter put it:

“Allow me to translate. We will not publish any numbers which will cause clients to question whether our $500M investment in AI is actually delivering savings to them.”

Source: Financial Times