Norton Rose Fulbright’s US managing partner Jeff Cody is targeting one metric for growth that he says will take care of the rest: lawyer headcount.
The firm is on pace to reach about 900 US lawyers by the end of the year, up from roughly 850 today, Cody said. He’s optimistic that the firm by the end of next year will be on the brink of hitting 1,000 US lawyers, a number the firm has long targeted.
“Lawyer growth, to me, that’s the driver,” Cody said in a wide-ranging interview. “It’s growing lawyers, partners, and growing the firm. If we’re successful, we’ll be successful at growing revenue.”
Created through the 2013 merger of Texas-founded Fulbright & Jaworski and global firm Norton Rose, NRF today has more than 3,000 lawyers. That’s down from the 3,800 the firm started with a decade ago. Its US practice is similarly looking to gain the size it expected through a 2017 merger with New York-based Chadbourne & Parke, when the firm initially anticipated having around 1,000 US lawyers. Many lawyers left before the merger was finalized.
Jeff Cody
Photo courtesy of Norton Rose Fulbright
Traditionally, law firm leaders target metrics such as revenue per lawyer, but there has been an increasing drive for scale as the largest law firms have outperformed their smaller peers in recent years. Cody, who is based in Texas, said the firm was looking to grow through lateral partners and group hires rather than another merger.
“If you’re competing to bring in new talent, that’s the strategy to grow the firm and produce more revenue and grow more hours,” he said.
The firm’s global revenue last year grew more than 8% to nearly $2.6 billion, despite a roughly flat headcount. Norton Rose operates as a Swiss verein, meaning its regional branches have some financial autonomy.
The firm has added roughly 70 partners in the US since 2020, Cody said, including through opening a new office in Chicago in 2022. The Chicago office has since moved to a new location in the trendy Fulton Market district. It sits around 40 attorneys—with Cody targeting 100 lawyers in the next few years.
The firm also hired an 11-lawyer group in Minneapolis in 2022, which Cody said has been part of a successful growth strategy targeting the Midwest.
The firm’s US operation grew revenue by 13% last year, and its performance so far this year has beaten that, Cody said, driven by a slight increase in lawyer productivity and headcount. The firm has seen strong demand in litigation and arbitration while middle-market M&A deals have been on “an uptick” over the past few months, he said.
“We’ve added timekeepers but our productivity is up,” Cody said. “It is just demand. We’re busy.”
Globally, Norton Rose Fulbright has no plans to pack up its operation in the Greater China region, Cody said. A team of roughly 20 lawyers there handles transactional work through offices in Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong, the firm says. Other firms have abandoned the market in recent months, in part due to data privacy concerns.
“The folks there have really strong practices, so I don’t anticipate any changes,” Cody said.
The firm also is investing in the Saudi Arabia legal market in a broader effort to bolster its Middle Eastern presence, Cody said. Norton Rose’s Riyadh office forged an alliance with a local firm last year and also hired a local partner from Clifford Chance.
“There is so much money flowing out of the region and getting invested in the US and other places,” Cody said. “We see that as a tremendous opportunity to grow.”
Wait-and-See AI Strategy
Norton Rose has decided against being a “material developer” of generative artificial intelligence tools, and is instead adopting a wait-and-see approach as the fast-shifting market develops, Cody said.
Some firms have built internal data science teams or invested in AI developers like Harvey. Cody cautioned that law firms aren’t necessarily designed to build new technologies and those firms could be left flat-footed if they turn out to have backed the wrong investments.
Gina Shishima
Photo courtesy of Norton Rose Fulbright
“Those law firms investing a lot of capital, I think they’ll have a hard time shifting gears as the market develops and new products come out,” he said. “There’s going to be a lot of movement in the next couple, three years.”
Still, Cody did not downplay the gravity of change AI tools could bring to the legal services market. Tools that will aid drafting documents are “the way of the future,” he said. The billable hour model will last for at least another five years before “some kind of value-based billing” ultimately takes hold, he said.
The law firm is testing new generative AI tools and wants to be a fast follower adopting tools that are more proven to deliver faster, more effective legal services, said Gina Shishima, chief strategy and operations partner at Norton Rose.
“We’re looking for tools that can solve the problems we want solved,” she said. “We’re not looking just for the sake of looking for what’s some cool AI tool.”
