Steptoe Surpasses Half Billion in Revenue With New Houston Office (1)

Regulatory and litigation-focused law firm Steptoe grew revenue to more than half a billion in 2024 and also raised average equity partner payouts to $2.1 million.

Leaders at Steptoe, the second Am Law 100 firm to disclose financial metrics for 2024, said Wednesday the law firm’s 7.5% and 5% increases in revenue and profits per equity partner from 2023 are due to “smart and steady” growth in the firm’s trial and energy deal practices in 2024. Total revenue was $530 million, up from $493 million.

With the firm increasing the number of lawyers by 7.5%, from 410 to 441, Steptoe’s revenue per lawyer, a measure of the average amount of money generated by each attorney, sat still from 2023 at $1.2 million.

The firm began the year with the launch of a Houston office by acquiring 37 professionals from trial boutique SKV before adding another 14 lateral partners throughout the year.

Lawyers at the firm obtained some notable outcomes for corporate clients throughout 2024. Early in the year, the firm obtained a defense verdict for Lattice Semiconductor when a trial ended in three weeks with the jury denying all of the plaintiff’s claims. Lawyers also secured an acquittal of Autonomy CEO Mike Lynch in an accounting fraud trial relating to HP’s $11.7 billion acquisition of his company in 2011. (Lynch, once called Britain’s Bill Gates, perished while celebrating the acquittal when his yacht sank off the coast of Sicily.)

‘Disputes-Focused’

Steptoe chair Gwen Renigar, in an interview Wednesday, credited the firm’s financial increases to several trial teams going to court after years of preparation, paired with an influx of financing and deal work for longstanding clients in the energy sector. But while many of the firm’s DC-born peers have pivoted to lucrative private equity deals, Renigar said Steptoe will continue to lean into its historical strengths in litigation and regulatory disputes.

Gwen Renigar

Steptoe

Renigar said the Supreme Court’s ruling in Loper Bright v. Raimondo, which placed statutory interpretation of vague laws in the hands of courts rather than federal agencies, will give way to a rise in affirmative and defensive litigation. She also said the firm’s appropriations practice group will be busy advising clients who are impacted by the Trump administration’s federal spending restrictions.

“Historically, we are not a deal firm and our strategic plan is not to become a deal firm,” Renigar said. “In terms of year-over-year growth, our transactional practice grew substantially, but as a firm, we continue to be regulatory and litigation and disputes-focused.”

Novel Pay Structure

The firm is also in its first year of allowing associates to self-sort into one of three billable hour targets corresponding to different levels of pay. The novel approach is intended to provide greater work-life balance.

Top-billers—those logging 2,200 hours—will be paid on a scale ranging from $236,250 to $581,750. The scale for those billing 2,000 hours per year will go from $225,000 to $502,500. The third category of associates—those logging 1,800 billable hours—will be paid on a scale that starts at $215,000 for first-year associates.

Renigar said “not quite” one-third of the firm’s associates have been sorted into each, with the largest minority in the 2,000-hour target. A challenge this year for firm leaders will be to ensure this approach provides the firm sufficient coverage to serve clients.

“A firm like ours doesn’t want to have associates doing nothing and waiting for demand,” Renigar said. “The way to meet the demand is to hire more associates and to not burn out the associates that we have. They are committing to how much work they want to do and we are honoring that. If we need more work to be done, we are hiring more.”

The firm’s revenue and profitability increases fall in line with, if falling somewhat short of, increases realized by Steptoe’s Am Law Second 50 peers, data released Wednesday by Wells Fargo’s Legal Specialty Group show. Law firms with a rank of 51-100 saw an average revenue increase of 9.6% and an average profits per equity partner increase of 12.4% in 2024.