Magic Circle firm Linklaters sees partner profits soar to £2.5m after record year
Partners at magic circle law firm Linklaters saw pay packets double after the firm had its third consecutive year of double-digit profit growth.
For its year to 30 April, 2026, Linklaters reported record revenue of £2.47bn, up nearly 7 per cent, and pre-tax profit of £1.2bn, up over 11 per cent, after hitting the billion-pound mark last year for the first time.
As a result, profit per equity partner (PEP) rose over 11 per cent to £2.48m, while profit per all partners grew nearly 11 per cent to £2.31m.
Firmwide managing partner, Paul Lewis, called it “another outstanding year”, adding, “our results reflect the confidence and trust our clients continue to place in us to advise on their most high-stakes matters.”
Like the rest of its top English firms, Linklaters has been on a punchy international expansion drive and is determined to break into the US market.
Over the past four years, the results show that the firm has doubled its US revenue and quadrupled profit, increasing its US partnership to around 55 partners. Recently, the magic circle giant snagged two of FIFA’s lawyers from a rival firm, Paul Weiss, to bolster its US strategic disputes.
Firm moved into new HQ
The firm opened new offices in Shanghai and Singapore and added 37 new elected partners and 12 lateral partner hires across global offices.
In the City, the firm moved into its new global headquarters at 20 Ropemaker Street, an office that consists of 360,000 sq ft of space.
Its mandates over the last year include advising the UK government on the £38bn Sizewell C Nuclear Plant Project, representing Unilever on the global demerger and listings of The Magnum Ice Cream Company, and defending Visa against class actions and group proceedings in the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) and Kelkoo in its antitrust lawsuit against Google.
Like all major law firms, Linklaters has made its own moves on legal AI. Lewis explained: “We continued to strengthen our leadership in legal AI, launching our Applied Intelligence team, hiring dedicated AI lawyers and rolling out frontier agentic technology to deliver more, better and faster, for clients.”