Trending: Law Firm Partner Hourly Rates

Annually, LexisNexis® CounselLink® publishes its trends report on law firm partner hourly rates. The 2025 Mid-year Trends Report indicates more fluctuation in median partner hourly fees across practice areas and compared to mid-year 2024 data. In this article, we'll look at detailed data about the mid-year CounselLink Trends Report, the closing gap between mid-sized law firms and Big Law, and considering a vendor management program as part of enterprise legal management to direct legal spend, performance initiatives and vendor selection. 

About the CounselLink 2025 Mid-year Trends Report

CounselLink utilizes one of the legal industry’s largest and most reliable sources of benchmarking data, the CounselLink Insight Benchmarking Database of more than $67 billion in legal spending across more than 510,000 timekeepers and more than 1.8 million matters, featuring normalized data.

In 2024, many organizations published data on high law firm partner fees; however, the CounselLink trends data is an accurate portrayal of law firm fees because it provides apples-to-apples comparisons of data with no outliers. The benchmarking insights provided in this report are from actual invoices paid by corporate legal to law firms during the stated time period and are not based on accruals. Outside counsel billing rates analyzed by CounselLink are the actual rates paid by corporations, not standard or “rack” rates.

The methodology for evaluating year-over-year outside counsel rates examines data at the timekeeper level, only including the timekeepers who billed in each time period. Calculating rate changes at the timekeeper level eliminates the “noise” that can be caused by changes in the mix of types of legal work and matter staffing.

Law Firm Partner Hourly Rates in 2025

During the COVID-19 pandemic, law firm partner hourly rates increased at a fast clip in 2023, featuring 2022 data, and the roller coaster of high law firm fees began. Corporate legal departments were tasked with legal spend beyond budget constraints, the need to implement vendor management programs, working with outside counsel to address alternative fee arrangements, and bringing more work in-house.

In 2022, featuring a full year of 2021 data, median law firm partner fees jumped to 4.5% from around 3.5%, which at that time was the highest on record. In 2023, featuring a full year of 2022 data, partner hourly fees jumped on average to 5.4%, and this became the highest recorded average partner hourly rates across practice areas. This average remains the highest thus far since CounselLink has published its first trends report in 2012.

Looking at mid-year 2025 figures, the relational analysis of law firm partner hourly rates to the 2024 annual trends report shows a slight downward movement in Big Law share of wallet. The 2025 data includes January through July analysis, and the latter half of the year may indicate further fluctuations in law firm partner rates.

The full year of data in 2022, reported in the CounselLink 2023 Trends Report, now marks a milestone for outside counsel fees, as the trends report data before 2022 was significantly less. Much of the data analysis in the CounselLink Trends Reports is on Big Law share of wallet, the largest firms, more than 750 lawyers.

Where are Law Firm Partner Rates Now?

Both 2024 and YTD July 2025 partner hourly rate increases indicate a decline from the unprecedented record level rate increases in the 2023 report (featuring 12 months of 2022 data). Data showing 2025 increases are still considerably higher than those recorded every year before 2023.

Several critical factors are notable in the January through July 2025 benchmark data:

• Median partner hourly rates by size of law firm are dramatically different in 2025 YTD over 2024 data.
• Hourly rates in the second tier of firms (501-750 lawyers) grew significantly to partially close the gap in billing rates relative to the largest firms.
• Although various practice areas continue to show higher partner hourly rates, the level of increase is not trending as in previous years.

The data in the mid-year 2025 report reflects a continued shift away from Big Law share of wallet. The full CounselLink 2025 Trends Report, reflecting 12 months of 2024 data, provides in-depth detail about Big Law command of legal spend. This suggests that general counsels may be negotiating harder with law firms. It also suggests that mid-sized law firms with equal expertise and lower fees may be getting a larger chunk of the corporate business.

Hourly rates in the second tier of firms (501-750 lawyers) grew significantly to partially close the gap in billing rates relative to the largest firms. However, in 2025, Big Law’s share has dropped relative to 2024, from 50% to 47%. Share of legal spend has fallen for the largest firms in virtually all practices, most notably in Mergers & Acquisitions (from 73% share in 2024 to 66% in 2025) and Regulatory & Compliance (from 56% share in 2024 to 50% in 2025).

Results could change as 2025 books close. The CounselLink 2026 Trends Report will reflect the full 12 months of data on legal spend, and this additional information on average partner hourly rates could fluctuate further.

Download a complimentary copy of the LexisNexis CounselLink 2025 Mid-year Trends Report.

Implement A Vendor Management Program

CounselLink+ is an enterprise legal management platform with a vendor management application. It enables corporate legal departments to monitor legal spend, performance of vendors, and the quality of vendor recruitment criteria.

Lex Machina® Counsel Selector is a tool in CounselLink+ that helps legal operations professionals conduct a side-by-side comparison of outside counsel to ensure that the more preferred vendor is hired.

Other aspects of the CounselLink+ environment include contract lifecycle management, legal spend management, which goes hand in hand with data in the trends report, and matter management. Now with AI-powered matter summarization features with Protégé in CounselLink+, legal departments can expedite workflow and make it more efficient. Invoice summarization is also a new feature in CounselLink+ powered by Protégé.

Set up a demo or CounselLink+ to see even more features than what is described above.