The news follows reports by Lawyers Weekly that fellow BigLaw firms Herbert Smith Freehills, Allen & Overy, Ashurst, Clyde & Co and HFW released their financial results for the past year, which saw firm revenue of over £1 billion, equity partners receiving $3.3 million in profit, equity partners earning almost $2 million in profit, equity partners earned $1.35 million, and that profit per lawyer was $232,000, respectively.

The firm’s profit per partner for FY21 was up 41.5 per cent compared to FY20, “reflecting revenue growth in this wide range of markets”, it said in a statement. Compared to FY19, PPP reflected a 25.1 per cent increase.

Most global regions that the firm is based in posted “significant growth”, it continued: APAC revenues were up 5.8 per cent, EMEA by 12.7 per cent, and North America was up 5.5 per cent.

In terms of practice areas, Bakers remains a “transactional powerhouse”, it proclaimed, with M&A growing by 8 per cent and private equity skyrocketing by 30 per cent.

The firm’s employment and compensation and dispute resolution practices also saw strong growth, with both rising by 15 per cent in FY21.

Reflecting on the year’s results, Bakers global chair Milton Cheng said that, against such a challenging backdrop, the posting of such record revenues was a “huge vote of confidence” from the firm’s clients and was a testament to the hard work and resilience of employees globally.

“Much of this increase in activity was driven by the adoption of our firm-wide, comprehensive Client & Market Strategy, with success in areas such as the TMT sector, and across our Private Equity practice, an encouraging validation of the investments we have made, and continue to make, in these areas,” he said.

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“However, while we are proud of what we have achieved together in this last, extraordinary year, we know that we can still do more. We need to continue to build momentum – focusing on how we can achieve sustainable and inclusive growth – for the firm and for our clients. Our Client & Market Strategy will help us to achieve this.”

The firm has entered FY22 confident in the lessons it has learned, Mr Cheng continued, from the age of coronavirus.

“We continue to grow both through our excellent home-grown talent and by recruiting high-quality lateral talent to join our firm and build on key strengths in areas including M&A, PE, and in other complex cross-border transactions, multi-jurisdictional investigations, and in the digital transformation space,” he outlined.

“As businesses in all sectors around the world embrace and adapt to the digital age, we also continue to invest in technology, being at the forefront in bringing advanced machine learning to the legal sector. Our partnership with SparkBeyond will use artificial intelligence to analyse massive amounts of data gathered by the firm and from the internet to predict the kind of legal services a given client will need in the near future.”

“I expect it to be a catalyst to a cascade of new ways of thinking our firm, helping us to drive and leverage our growth mindset at Baker McKenzie.”