Katten Partner Profits Top $3.3 Million as Firm Eyes More Growth

Katten Muchin Rosenman’s profits per equity partner likely topped $3.3 million in 2025, marking the second consecutive year of at least 20% growth, the firm’s chair said.

The firm is targeting even bigger numbers, said Gil Soffer, who’s led Katten as chair since last year. The firm is aiming to hit $5 million within the next five years, according to a recently concluded strategic planning process.

“We are seeing increased productivity, which is why this is the right time for the growth that our plan calls for,” Soffer said in an interview. The firm’s revenue figure for 2025 has not yet been finalized, but Soffer said he was confident in the profit projections.

The law firm, which was founded in Chicago in 1974, currently has about 650 lawyers and aims to boost that number toward 800 lawyers by the end of the five-year period, he said. The firm is not interested in being acquired by a larger firm as part of a merger, he said.

Katten Chair Gil Soffer

“Whatever benefits come from enormous scale, we think, and our strategic plan articulates, they would be outweighed by the costs that would come with it,” Soffer said. “And we believe we can get where we need to be.”

The decision comes amid a spate of Big Law mergers that are driven by a desire to achieve greater scale in a consolidating industry where the largest law firms are outperforming.

Perkins Coie, which is larger than Katten, is merging with UK-founded firm Ashurst. And Cadwalader, which is smaller than Katten, will be acquired by Hogan Lovells.

“There is simply a cost to being much, much larger,” Soffer said. “Culture means a lot, and we don’t want to be at risk of sacrificing or losing it, which we would be if we were much larger.”

Growth

Katten’s plan calls for growth in its strongest practices, such as finance, funds, corporate transactional work, and restructuring. The firm is looking to grow through lateral acquisitions, including group hires or a combination with a smaller firm, Soffer said.

Growing in its main practices will help the firm continue to attract high quality work, he said.

Katten last month hired former Paul Weiss private credit partner Mohammed Alvi in Los Angeles. In January, the firm hired two restructuring partners in the UK from DLA Piper. In July, Michael Didiuk joined from Schultze Roth + Zabel as a partner in Katten’s financial markets and funds department in New York.

The firm also saw energy and climate solutions partner Stanford Renas depart for Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati in October.

The strategic plan calls for more initiatives to collaborate through cross-selling and to deepen its relationship with current clients. It also focuses on increasing lawyer productivity, including through the use of generative artificial intelligence. The firm is a customer of legal AI tool Harvey.

Productivity

Soffer said the firm’s productivity—or the billable hours its lawyers are generating on average—has risen in recent years. That’s in contrast to a broader industry trend of declining productivity.

Lawyers across the industry on average billed 1,581 hours last year, which was down 0.1% from the prior year, according to data from Citi’s law firm banking group. That compares to 1,640 hours in 2015.

“We are at a point where we can grow, we have the resources to grow, and it’s not doing it by getting larger without the work to support it,” he said.

Soffer is a white-collar partner who left the firm in 2008 to serve for one year in the US Justice Department, managing a corporate fraud task force. He helped to draft the DOJ’s corporate monitor and charging principles. He appears as an on-air legal commentator for the local Chicago ABC news affiliate.

Work in white collar practices has “ebbed” during the Trump administration, he said, noting a reduced emphasis on monitorships and enforcement of Foreign Corrupt Practices Act cases.

Still, he said the recent rollout of an initiative targeting fraud against the government will breathe some life into the practice, particularly in the healthcare space. The initiative was launched at the White House in February and announced by the US Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

“That’s good news for us because we have a really strong healthcare and healthcare fraud practice,” Soffer said.