Gretta Rusanow (Citi): The New Math of Law Firm Profitability

Law firms like to describe themselves as simple partnerships. Economically, they behave more like highly tuned performance machines balancing profit, talent, leverage, and now — technological disruption. In this episode of New Law Order, Joel Cohen and Yale Law Professor John Morley are joined by Gretta Rusanow, Managing Director and Head of Advisory Services at Citi’s Law Firm Group, to examine what the numbers actually say about the modern legal industry, (conversation taped in September 2025).Drawing on an uniquely broad dataset spanning roughly 200 firms, Gretta offers a rare, industry-wide perspective on revenue growth, headcount expansion, market concentration, and the shifting structure of the partnership model. The post-pandemic story, she explains, is not one of fragility but resilience: steady revenue growth, rising profits per equity partner, and increasing competitive pressure among the largest firms.The conversation explores why the Am Law elite continue to outpace the broader market, how firms reconcile modest demand growth with aggressive expansion strategies, and why leverage — long treated as a quiet driver of profitability — is being rethought in the age of generative AI. Gretta also unpacks one of the most consequential structural shifts in Big Law: the rise of the income partner tier, its logic, and its economic tradeoffs.In this conversation:The Resilience Paradox: Despite volatility, industry revenues and profits have climbed, challenging long-standing narratives of structural vulnerability.Market Concentration Dynamics: Why the largest firms continue capturing disproportionate growth in a slow-growth demand environment.Leverage Under Pressure: How firms are reassessing the traditional pyramid model amid rising costs and generative AI adoption.The Income Partner Equation: Talent retention tool, economic compromise, or both?The Cost of Technological Arms Races: Why generative AI may accelerate consolidation rather than flatten competition.Guest: Gretta Rusanow is a Managing Director and Head of Advisory Services in Citi’s Law Firm Group. A former practicing lawyer, she advises law firm leaders on strategy, performance, and market trends, drawing on one of the most comprehensive financial datasets in the legal industry.For more conversations with the figures reshaping the legal business, subscribe to New Law Order. For a CLE-eligible version of this interview and more legal analysis, visit www.talksonlaw.com. For questions or comments, email [email protected].