Top Lawyers’ Fees Have Skyrocketed. Be Prepared to Pay $3,400 an Hour.

At Spritzler, Spritzler and Spritzler law isn't a profession it's a calling. I'm honored to have the opportunity to serve my clients.

No, I'm not kidding! How dare you call me a goniff!

Top Lawyers’ Fees Have Skyrocketed. Be Prepared to Pay $3,400 an Hour.

Expertise and ego are pushing up hourly rates to once-unthinkable levels in an escalating race among firms

By Erin Mulvaney, WSJ

Feb. 18, 2026 7:00 pm ET

Top lawyers’ hourly rates have surged, with some partners now charging $3,000, and one specialist up to $6,000.

When Christopher Clark, a litigator at a boutique law firm, raised his hourly rate to the once-unthinkable level of $3,000, he said he didn’t receive pushback from clients. But he did get one notable comment.

“Congratulations,” the client said. “That is the highest rate we’ve seen.”

Just over a year ago, the going rate for a top lawyer was in the $2,500 an hour range. Now that looks downright quaint, as premium partners are raking in as much as Clark—and far more in some cases.

Legal fees have risen much faster than inflation for years now and corporations are trying to rein in spending by pressuring law firms to use artificial intelligence for routine tasks and keep associate fees in check. The same isn’t true at the top end, where star trial lawyers, rainmaking corporate dealmakers, and veterans of Supreme Court oral arguments are driving more aggressively on pay than ever and meeting little resistance.

“The question is always, are they worth it? You know, some of these guys are worth it,” said Kerry McLean, Intuit’s general counsel, who in her role hires law firms to do the company’s outside legal work. “They understand the industry, they’re connected, and have a lot of experience.”

Clark has pushed his own fees by about 30% since he left his position at a large firm four years ago. As the lawyer for clients including Hunter Biden, Mark Cuban and Elon Musk, he still views his rate as a bargain. “There is a small world of lawyers who can hop on the phone and solve a crisis,” he said.

Some senior partners now charge as much as $3,400 an hour at the country’s largest law firms, according to data from Persuit, a software company that in-house lawyers use to analyze their legal bills. Among the top 50 largest firms, rates for partners increased by 16% on average last year.

In bankruptcy court filings, Latham & Watkins and Kirkland & Ellis—two of the largest firms in the world—report some partners’ hourly rates will rise to more than $3,000 an hour this year.

A decade ago, elite partners raised eyebrows when they raised rates to $1,500 an hour. Since then rates have rapidly escalated for several reasons, including a more competitive market for talent that has increased law-firm expenses, the high stakes of litigation and corporate dealmaking—and perhaps most of all because of ego.

Some lawyers with specialized skills are even more aggressively pushing the upper limit. Eric Troutman, a partner at a Southern California firm, has already told his clients that he is upping his rates to $6,000 for consulting on compliance issues in his niche specialty of telecom regulation. Last year he charged $4,200 an hour.

A few prospective clients have balked and found other lawyers to do their work, but he still has a full plate.

“It’s basic supply and demand,” Troutman said. “If you want what I would consider the gold standard, this is who we are and this is the price.”

Some lawyers say they upped their rates to $3,000 or more an hour in response to public reports of a couple of superstar lawyers—including celebrity trial lawyer Alex Spiro and Supreme Court litigator Neal Katyal—beginning to charge that.

“Setting these rates is more art than science,” said David Lat, a former corporate lawyer who now writes a legal affairs newsletter. “At a certain point, for some firms, it’s a publicity stunt.”

Two prominent Susman Godfrey partners, Bill Carmody and Neal Manne, upped their hourly rates to $4,000 an hour this year. But Carmody said in reality he usually gets paid via fee agreements he makes with clients that can involve an overall cap or a payout only if he wins.

“They could be in a pickle and it’s not public yet. I can size up the case and determine what it’s worth. Then, I figure out if I can quickly and quietly make it disappear,” Carmody said.

Carmody has represented Uber, including in a high-profile battle with Waymo over alleged trade secrets that led to a settlement worth about $245 million, and he recently won a privacy class action against Google and a $4.7 billion jury verdict against the NFL in an antitrust lawsuit over its Sunday ticket pricing. He typically only charges his high hourly fee as a stopgap measure until he strikes a fee agreement.

A reckoning does appear to be coming on fees for more routine work. Companies are starting to do more legal work in-house thanks to AI tools, including completing tedious regulatory filings, performing due diligence for mergers and acquisitions, and reviewing documents. That will put pressure on firms’ bottom line, even if the top partners continue to charge stratospheric rates.

The associate lawyers who do this type of work and bill large volumes of hours now make as much as $1,400 an hour for a junior associate and $2,000 an hour for senior associates, according to Persuit’s analysis.

In light of more sophisticated AI tools, “traditional rate hikes don’t just look expensive, they look illogical,” Persuit’s CEO Jim Delkousis said.

Veteran trial lawyer David Boies said clients are willing to pay the hourly rates at the high end because the stakes for certain litigation and corporate work are so high. The current rates, though, “by any standard, in a sensible world, are out of sight,” he said.

Boies, chairman emeritus of Boies Schiller, said his firm has never wanted to be at the top of the market. “We want to say with a straight face that we are a bargain—not in a reasonable world but in the actual world.”

He charges just over $2,700 an hour.