Am Law 200 2026: Revenue, PEP and Headcount Table

Thomson Reuters Institute, writing to in-house teams on 11 February 2026 from the 2026 State of the US Legal Market, told general counsel to expand the panel into Second Hundred and midsize firms. Midsize platforms took nearly 5 percent demand growth in late 2025 against about 2 percent at the Am Law 100. The same note put a roughly 40 percent hourly gap between Am Law 100 lawyers charging over $1,000 and smaller firms averaging $600. That is a blog generalization, not a Second Hundred median rate. It is still the only public rate picture a head of legal can put next to this table.

The 2026 ACC Chief Legal Officers Survey, released 29 January 2026 with FTI Consulting, spoke to 1,049 chief legal officers across 20 industries and 43 countries. Eighty-four percent report directly to the CEO. Thirty-four percent use the title Chief Legal Officer. Seventy-nine percent almost always attend board meetings. Sixty-three percent expect in-house headcount to remain stable. Forty-eight percent increased reliance on outside counsel as a regulatory pressure valve; 27 percent did the same with consultants. Trade and tariffs (30 percent) and AI regulation (24 percent) were the fastest-growing priority areas. The desk that buys Second Hundred hours is an enterprise-risk owner, not a law-firm hiring partner.

The prior wave still matters, because it is the plan those officers took into 2025. The 2025 ACC survey (772 CLOs, released 28 January 2025) found 43 percent planned to increase the volume of work sent to law firms, up 17 percentage points, with 43 percent of that increase attributed to the global regulatory landscape. Thirty percent planned to increase lawyer headcount — 50 percent among the largest companies, per FTI’s 28 January 2025 release. Forty-one percent of departments had received a cost-cutting mandate the prior year. Litigation volume was up for 42 percent; internal investigations for 44 percent; external investigations for 24 percent; litigation cost for 60 percent. Read against the 2026 wave, the pattern is stable in-house headcount plus heavier outside-counsel use. The company is not building a parallel army. It is buying hours.

Gunderson Dettmer’s own site claims 1,600-plus venture financings for company clients since 2023, more than $45 billion raised, and PitchBook 2025 Global League Tables — as the firm restates them — as most-active VC law firm globally for a 12th consecutive year, with 1,453 venture financings. Fisher Phillips describes an employer-side labor platform of 800-plus lawyers across 47 offices. Fish & Richardson markets litigation, patent, post-grant and trademark, and an eighth consecutive year atop Lex Machina PTAB rankings as stated on the homepage. Cahill claims, via Debtwire as the firm prints it, to have been the leading legal counsel to North American high-yield bond managers by volume in 2025. Baker Donelson describes a nationally ranked healthcare practice, more than 40 of the top 100 financial-services companies, more than half of the Fortune 100, and more than 700 attorneys and advisors. Kobre & Kim is a disputes-and-investigations platform a GC buys when the Am Law 100 panel is conflicted. Cole, Scott & Kissane, on its own site, is Florida’s largest full-service civil-litigation firm: 12 Florida offices, 4,772 files closed in the last 12 months, average lifecycle 86 days. Munger Tolles states 200-plus lawyers, 75 percent of attorneys with federal or state clerkships, 15 former U.S. Supreme Court clerks, and a No. 1 rank on The American Lawyer’s 2026 A-List. Lowenstein Sandler: over 400 lawyers, with stated strength in technology, life sciences, and investment funds. Choate Hall & Stewart markets five core areas and a more balanced partner-to-associate ratio than its competition. Those are the products. The ordinal is not.

Patent prosecution is a separate credential from the state bar. The USPTO requires applicants to meet 37 C.F.R. § 11.7; the registration examination is 100 multiple-choice questions, pass 63 of 90 scored (70 percent), with published fees of $118 application, $226 examination, $221 Prometric administration, and $226 registration grant. Attorneys who file a certificate of good standing become patent attorneys; others become patent agents. That gate is live for a Fish & Richardson prosecution seat. It is not required for every IP litigation seat. A head of legal who writes “IP lawyer, Second Hundred” has not specified the job.

Sartori & Partners runs a continuous research program over its own records: nearly 1.5 million lawyer profiles mapped globally, and quarterly market surveys running since 2019. The New York interview cohort is the one already named above; findings below use that same cohort, not a second count. Mandate telemetry is a smaller base, because those are closed files, not interviews: 22 New York partner searches over the trailing three years, with a 39 percent counter-offer incidence and a median 15 working days from offer to acceptance.

Of 214 general counsel and deputy general counsel sitting on Am Law 100 or Second Hundred panels, drawn from that New York cohort over a 24-month window, 132 said they price the row on revenue per lawyer and blended rate, not on gross-revenue rank. A chief legal officer at a Fortune-ranked healthcare operator, in that same 214, told us the company had stopped using revenue rank as a rate screen after a Second Hundred employment platform billed a wage-and-hour docket at a fraction of the Am Law 100 labor firm already on the panel. A New York high-yield partner at a Second Hundred capital-markets firm — one of 61 capital-markets partners inside the same cohort, read over 36 months — put the buyer more bluntly: the person who hires them is the issuer’s deputy GC for finance, and that person has never asked the firm’s revenue rank.

Of 22 closed New York partner searches over three years, nine were Second Hundred specialist seats a corporate client was buying — employer-side labor, patent, conflicts-free disputes, high-yield — rather than Am Law 100 full-service chairs. Six of those nine were labor, IP, disputes, or high-yield. Six of the nine closed inside the 4-to-7-month window. Three ran past seven months because conflicts with the company’s existing Am Law 100 panel were not on the intake form. That is the finding that does not flatter us: we cannot see a company’s panel conflicts until the client opens the file. Seven of the 22 opened on a revenue-rank brief (“Am Law 150 or better”) that we had to rewrite before a shortlist would hold. Four of the 22 lost the first preferred candidate to those undisclosed panel conflicts. The searches still closed. The first names did not.

Three composites, none named. A PE-backed healthcare platform came in with an “Am Law 150 employment counsel” brief for a wage-and-hour docket across three southern states. We rewrote the spec to an employer-side labor platform. The search closed in five months, inside the 4-to-7-month window; the incumbent firm counter-offered inside the 39 percent city incidence, and the candidate still signed on the 15-day median. A listed technology company needed investigations counsel after its Am Law 100 panel firm turned out to be conflicted on a related-party inquiry. We filled from a conflicts-free disputes platform in six months. The first preferred candidate was lost to a second panel conflict the company had not listed — the same failure mode as four of our 22 closed New York files. A Second Hundred capital-markets group hired an income partner for high-yield. That search closed in four months, on the fast side of the window, after book verification rather than a ranking conversation. The earn-side move is real. It is not the spine of this page.

If the company question is whether to put the lawyer on the payroll rather than on a panel, that search is in-house counsel recruiting, not a ranking exercise. If the firm question is a partner seat against this table, that search is partner recruiting. Practice concentration inside the largest platforms is a different article: what the largest firms are built on. PEP as a vanity metric has its own salary-side essay.