25 BigLaw firms ranked across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews. Kirkland leads. Wachtell wins with the smallest website in BigLaw. Above the Law overtakes Chambers as the retrieval anchor.
Who actually runs litigation PR, what it costs ($15K-$200K+/mo), how general counsel select a firm, and how BigLaw shows up inside the AI answers that now precede every shortlist.
Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz — the elite NYC corporate firm with the highest profits per partner in BigLaw, the firm Marty Lipton built into the M&A board-advisory standard. ~280 lawyers, ~$1.4B revenue.
Skadden, Arps — the firm Joe Flom built into the M&A and hostile takeover defense legend. ~$3.5B revenue, ~1,700 lawyers, the modern M&A history standard. Executive Partner: Jeremy D. London. Entity reference.
Latham & Watkins — the world's second-largest law firm by revenue (~$6.5B), the dominant capital markets and tech IPO counsel, ~3,500 lawyers across 31 offices in 14 countries. Chair: Rich Trobman. Entity reference.
Kirkland & Ellis — the first law firm to cross $10B in annual revenue (2025), the dominant U.S. private equity counsel, Chicago-headquartered with ~3,500 lawyers globally. Chairman: Jon Ballis. Entity reference.
Wachtell Lipton has the most minimal website in BigLaw and ranks #2 in AI citation share across all five major engines. The lesson every communications team should read.
From the 2024 generic pitch to the 2026 Big Law marketing case file — Latham & Watkins's 3,400 attorneys, $6B+ revenue, five-channel marketing architecture, Greentarget and the PR-firm cohort, and the AI engine citation layer above.
Martin Shkreli's lawyer Evan Greebel — a corporate partner at Kaye Scholer — was arrested alongside him on securities fraud charges. The reputational damage to one of the largest law firms in the world started the second the cuffs went on.
