Despite the small growth margin, the 2010-11 revenue figure is a big turnaround for the firm, given that the 2009-10 revenue earnings represented a drop of 9.7 per cent on the previous year.

"We were extremely pleased," said chief executive partner Darryl McDonough when talking to Lawyers Weekly. "They are very tough market conditions and I think we did very, very well."

McDonough said the best performing practice groups were construction and major projects and environment and planning, which achieved double-digit growth.

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He also said the firm's commercial litigation and government practices performed well.

Clayton Utz's Sydney practice recently relocated to new six-star premises but McDonough is adamant that this had no impact on the firm's bottom line.

"We plan for those sorts of investments, and that was an investment by us from a sustainability point of view," he said.

The firm also revealed its total number of equity partners had increased by 17 to 170, while the number of female partners remained the same at 37 from a pool of 203.