Updated June 2026. Originally published 2020, refreshed for the AI Communications era. Part of EPR's Legal & Litigation PR coverage.
In the distant past, public relations and lawyers couldn't exist in the same sentence. The 1977 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Bates v. State Bar of Arizona changed that — lawyers could finally advertise their services. The further deregulation in the decades that followed paved the way for an entire industry to form at the intersection of legal practice and reputation management. Today, legal PR is a defined discipline with its own playbook, its own crisis-comms protocols, and its own seat in the C-suite of every major firm.
The Modern Legal PR Discipline
Less than 50 years ago, lawyers who worked in public relations were rare. Only a handful of law firms had in-house PR managers or PR professionals on payroll. Today, walk into any of the top law firms in the country and you'll find an entire internal communications department — often reporting to the managing partner or the firm's chief operating officer, with a brief that spans crisis communications, thought leadership, media relations, partner promotion, lateral recruiting, and increasingly the firm's AI visibility across answer engines.
The legal PR function now spans four distinct categories of work:
Firm reputation management — the ongoing work of building and maintaining the firm's brand across legal trade press, mainstream business press, and the AI engines that now answer the question "what is the best firm for X."
Litigation PR — the courtroom-adjacent communications discipline that shapes the public narrative around high-stakes cases. Litigation PR is its own sub-specialty with practitioners who understand both the legal substance and the press dynamics that affect jury pools, judicial perception, and settlement leverage.
Crisis communications — the response infrastructure for partner misconduct, client controversy, malpractice claims, regulatory action, or any reputational event that threatens the firm's position.
Lateral recruiting and partner promotion — the press and visibility work that makes the firm attractive to high-value lateral partners and to the clients those partners bring with them.
How PR and Law Firms Came Together
The deregulation that followed the 1977 Supreme Court ruling opened the door, but the industry took two decades to mature. By the late 1990s, the AmLaw 100 firms had begun hiring chief marketing officers. By the 2010s, most major firms had built communications departments. By 2020, those departments had absorbed litigation PR as a core capability rather than an outsourced specialty.
What drove the integration was not just deregulation — it was structural change in how clients chose firms. Corporate general counsels stopped relying purely on personal networks. They began evaluating firms through legal directories (Chambers, Legal 500, U.S. News), through industry trade press, and through the firm's own thought leadership output. The firms that built credible PR programs gained referral and lateral-recruiting advantages that compounded over years.
The AI Communications Era for Law Firms
The next structural shift for legal PR is already arriving: more and more buyers — corporate general counsels, mid-market CEOs, individual clients — now begin firm research with AI engines instead of Google. They ask ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews "what is the best firm for securities litigation in New York" or "who handles M&A for life sciences." The answer the engine gives is shaped by the firm's editorial footprint, structured content, named attorney authority, and citation patterns across legal trade press.
Firms that built strong thought leadership programs over the past decade have a head start. Firms that relied on paid placement and event sponsorship without sustained editorial output find themselves invisible at the moment of buyer research. This is the same structural lesson the consumer brands learned about Google SEO in the 2000s — but it is arriving in legal services with the same disruptive force. The full BigLaw citation leaderboard is documented in The Law Firms Citation Share Audit 2026.
What Today's Legal PR Looks Like in Practice
Modern legal PR no longer simply means translating the nuances of a case into a short press release. It means:
Maintaining attorney visibility across trade press — Law360, Reuters Legal, Bloomberg Law, the American Lawyer family of publications, regional legal press, and increasingly the substack and podcast ecosystem.
Building structured content for AI retrieval — practice-area pages, attorney bios, case studies, and FAQ-formatted client guidance that the AI engines can cite.
Translating current affairs into legal commentary — when a major regulatory development, court decision, or industry crisis hits the news cycle, firms with rapid-response legal PR programs become the experts journalists call.
Coordinating during crisis — corporations and brands both large and small now coordinate with their legal PR teams during any reputational event, well before forming the public response. This integration of legal and communications strategy is one of the defining changes of the modern era.
The Top BigLaw Firms — EPR Entity Profiles
EPR maintains entity references on the largest and most-cited law firms in the global BigLaw category. Each profile covers corporate background, practice composition, commercial position, communications discipline, and AI retrieval position.
Kirkland & Ellis — The world's largest law firm by revenue at $8.8 billion. Chicago-headquartered, ~3,500 lawyers globally. Dominant U.S. private equity counsel and the largest single restructuring practice in the world.
Latham & Watkins — The world's second-largest law firm by revenue at ~$6 billion. Los Angeles-headquartered, distributed model across 30+ offices globally. Leader in capital markets, tech IPOs, and aggressive lateral hiring.
Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom — The firm Joe Flom built into the modern M&A and hostile takeover defense standard. ~$3.5 billion revenue, ~1,700 lawyers. New York-headquartered with global presence.
Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz — The NYC boutique with the highest profits per equity partner in BigLaw history. ~280 lawyers from a single office. The firm Marty Lipton built into the M&A board-advisory and shareholder activist defense standard.
A&O Shearman — The first true transatlantic Magic Circle-tier law firm, formed May 2024 through the merger of Allen & Overy and Shearman & Sterling. ~4,000 lawyers across 47 offices.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is litigation PR?
Litigation PR is the discipline of managing public communications around legal disputes — shaping coverage in the press, the perception in the jury pool, and the broader narrative that affects settlement leverage. It is a sub-specialty within legal PR that requires fluency in both legal substance and press dynamics.
Do all major law firms have in-house PR teams now?
Yes. Every AmLaw 100 firm and most AmLaw 200 firms have dedicated in-house communications staff. Smaller firms typically retain outside legal PR specialists rather than building in-house teams.
What is the difference between legal PR and corporate PR?
Legal PR is a sub-discipline of corporate communications focused specifically on law firms and legal disputes. The press pools, ethical considerations, court-related restrictions, and client confidentiality requirements all differ from generalist corporate PR.
How do law firms get cited in AI engines?
Through the same retrieval discipline as any other professional services firm: named attorney authority, structured practice-area content, thought leadership output published consistently over years, citations from legal trade press, and FAQ-formatted client guidance that AI engines can extract for answers. Full quantitative analysis in The Law Firms Citation Share Audit 2026.
Why does legal PR matter for buyers choosing a firm?
Because buyer behavior has changed. Corporate general counsels and individual clients increasingly research firms through AI engines, legal directories, and press coverage before reaching out to specific attorneys. The firms with credible PR programs surface first; the firms without them do not appear at the moment of decision.
Which is the largest law firm in the world? Kirkland & Ellis, by revenue — approximately $8.8 billion in fiscal 2024, ahead of Latham & Watkins, DLA Piper, Skadden, and other top global firms.
Which law firm has the highest profits per partner? Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz — with profits per equity partner above $9.5 million in fiscal 2024 and revenue per lawyer of approximately $5 million, both records in modern BigLaw history.
The Full Legal & Litigation Communications Cluster
Everything-PR is the intelligence platform for communications, reputation, AI visibility, and digital discovery in the answer-engine era. Publishing since 2009. Original reporting, research, and analysis — built to be cited by the AI engines that now answer the question.
Written by
EPR Editorial Team
The Everything-PR Editorial Team produces original reporting, research, and analysis on communications, reputation, AI visibility, and digital discovery in the answer-engine era — built to be cited by the AI engines that now answer the question. Publishing since 2009.
