Whatever struggles the wider Los Angeles business community has experienced in recent years, one sector has been in steady growth mode: law firms and the lawyers who make them.

Lateral movement among both partner- and associate-level attorneys has ranged between “strong” and “red-hot” since the dawn of the Covid-19 pandemic. For years, East Coast and Midwest firms have jockeyed to find real estate and employees in L.A. Local consolidations or the rebranding of firms remain steady.

Take it from Perrie Weiner, who in 2018 was tasked with opening global law firm giant Baker McKenzie’s Century City operation. What started off as four attorneys in that year has turned into an operation of more than 70 employees, 48 of whom are lawyers.

“When I originally joined, L.A.’s a really rough market, so success would have been 15-20 lawyers in three to four years,” he said. “We ended up blowing past that and moving locations here twice. We have every major practice area of the firm represented here.”

Growth is of course achieved in a variety of ways – there’s the organic growth championed by many of the upstart firms here. And there’s the more dramatic entrances by firms that pry away an entire practice group at once or simply merge with a local operation to enter the market.

“It’s a buyer’s market,” observed Chris Frost, who formed the litigation-only Frost LLP in Westwood in mid-2023. “My impression is that firms are looking to grow from the lateral market and are getting tired of just raising talent straight out of law school.”

Frost said he has employed both strategies in building his operation, which in the coming months will bring him to more than 32 attorneys in L.A., with three offices in other states with their own teams.

Growing, and growing fast

For this special report, the Business Journal compared its 2022 and 2025 List of Law Firms, which ranks L.A. County offices by headcount. The report highlights the top 50 firms each for raw growth and percentage growth.

Large firms only grew larger. Eight of the top 10 fast growing by raw count had 52 or more attorneys in 2022 and added anywhere between 34 and 61 attorneys since. Nine of these 50 firms had 100 or more attorneys in 2022. Now, 15 of these firms do.

Averaged out, the 50 fastest growing firms by absolute change had 69 attorneys in 2022 and 94 this year, representing an average growth of 25 in that time. The growth-by-percent side produces some interesting outliers. The top five all grew by at least 100% since 2022, and even No. 50 boasted a growth of 25%.

Baker McKenzie made both lists, thanks to a jump from 33 lawyers to 48 when the Business Journal ranked its list in May. This was due in large part to the outpost landing a 17-person transaction team that lateraled from downtown-based Munger Tolles & Olson last year.

(Yes, your math is right. This moved offset a slight drop in headcount after 2022.)

The move caught the attention of legal publications nationally and was among the most prominent laterals of 2024.

“I knew it was imperative to have a private equity and an M&A practice in Los Angeles that would mirror what we had in Northern California and globally,” Weiner recalled. “Munger Tolles is a venerable L.A.-based firm with elite lawyers and an elite practice group in private equity, M&A and tax.”

Leading the way in absolute growth was downtown-based litigation giant Quinn Emanuel Urqhuart & Sullivan, which added 61 attorneys in that time frame. Rounding out the top five are Willkie Farr & Gallagher, with 50 added; Goodwin, with 49; Wilson Elser Moskowitz Edelman & Dicker with 42; and Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher with 39.

Willkie’s growth has been particularly meteoric, as the firm only entered the market about six months before the Business Journal’s 2022 list published. True to market forces, the office kicked off as a breakaway from the nearby Venable operation and later added multiple lateral teams – including a three-attorney real estate group from, again, Munger Tolles in 2022.

Perhaps underscoring the market, the loss of that team and the transactional team didn’t keep Munger Tolles off of this list. They still jumped from 142 attorneys in 2022 to 160 this year.

Getting up to speed

By their nature, smaller or newer firms will win the growth by percentage contest.

None exemplify this better than Glendale-based D.Law, a wage and hour class action firm that formed in 2015 and, in 2022, had all of three attorneys. This was by design at the time – the firm was largely powered by its extensive research and paralegal team that built up class actions and either brought in co-counsel or handed them off to partner firms to litigate.

The firm started to grow its attorney headcount in 2023 by acquiring a partner firm, signaling its intent to start arguing its own cases. The firm now boasts 40 attorneys – growth by 1,233%.

Following D.Law, the top five firms by percent growth are Shegerian & Associates with 150% growth; Wilson Sonsini with 120%; Troutman Pepper with 108%; and Snell & Wilmer with 100%. None of those firms had more than 30 attorneys in 2022.

For upstart firms, the sort of growth that looks eye-popping on the percent side but unremarkable on the raw numbers side is often the way to go.

“When I started the firm, I decided that with four lawyers, we were going to be safe and conservative with our growth,” Frost, of Frost LLP, said. “We did not go and chase other people until we had enough work to justify it. We are not adding lawyers until we get the work to justify adding bodies or they bring enough work to justify their existence.”

Frost LLP was not ranked in this Fastest Growing Law Firms report because it only formed in 2023.

Since forming, Frost LLP’s growth has focused on luring business litigation laterals piece by piece into the fold. It started off by taking out part of a floor in a Westwood tower. The firm now occupies two full floors, on top of expanding into New York with a full team and merging a Phoenix firm into the fold.

“When you’re starting a firm and you’re not well established yet and you’re four or five or six attorneys, getting lateral attorneys that are interested in sharing that risk for you, for a minute, we had more trouble than I expected in terms of bringing in lateral talent,” Frost said. “We have really hit our stride now; we’re seeing more resumes come in, even unsolicited, looking for positions to fill. It’s nice for us to be in that position.”

Mergers are also a factor

Combining firms has also created growth for L.A. firms and has generally been the way East Coast operations break into the market.

In the past several years, entries into the L.A. market via merger have included Saul Ewing merging with Freeman Freeman & Smiley; Spencer Fane merging with Pahl & McCay; and Michael Best & Friedrich acquiring O&A P.C.

Growth of existing offices by merger has also helped fill out operations, including Clark Hill combining with Barton Klugman & Oetting; Morrison Foerster bringing in Durie Tangri; and, most recently, Womble Bond Dickinson’s merger with Lewis Roca – the latter of which was the 10th largest jump by percentage for this list.

Other new entries have included Stradley Ronon Stevens & Young in Long Beach, which lured a 10-attorney team from the locally based Keesal Young & Logan last year.

As Weiner sees it, expansion by merger can be effective for law firms if the group you’re getting can plug into the firm’s larger practice groups.

“Acquiring a small firm makes it easier than doing it with a few people at a time, but it has to be a firm that scales with what you’re offering,” he explained, adding that practices such as private equity, M&A and securities litigation are generally scalable to larger operations. “We’re focused on strategic acquisitions of practice groups that make sense in a big firm context and we’re very careful about the integration process as well.”

It is for this reason, Weiner added, that boutique and mid-size firms will always have a home in the L.A. market, which is stubbornly a middle market economy when compared to behemoths like New York. The legal community here, he added, is tight and its relationship with clientele is often more personal than it is elsewhere.

“There will always be a place for a smaller to mid-size firms and I don’t necessarily think they’re the best suited candidates for mergers for larger firms,” Weiner said. “There are parts of entertainment that just don’t scale for a larger firm, for example. Project finance, that’ll scale, but not individual project management for an actor.

“A lot of firms in L.A. are rate-sensitive, and you can’t acquire a firm that has tremendous rate sensitivity and think they’re going to fold into a global firm,” he continued. “A lot of reason lawyers flee larger firms for smaller firms is to escape that.”