Most striking are findings showing that individual partners can easily bill more than $1,200 an hour at the top US firms. The National Law Journal researchers said a sampling from the magazine’s top-350 list produced four firms eclipsing that rate at the high end.

A Dallas doozy

The New York office of Anglo-US global giant DLA Piper and the Washington headquarters office of fellow transatlantic firm Hogan Lovells had peak rates of $1,200, while the Washington DC home office of Dickstein Shapiro topped out at $1,250 an hour.
However, leading the sample was the Dallas headquarters office of Locke Lorde, where an hour of time with one real estate investment trust partner sets clients back $1,285.

Sluggish

As eye-watering as some of the headline rates are, overall fee rises relative to 2011 were still low. The Journal’s survey shows that around the country, median hourly rate at firms across all fee earners rose by only 0.5 per cent – up $22 to $432 -- significantly below the current national inflation rate of 1.8 per cent, and well below the 3 per cent inflation rate at the beginning of this year.
At partner level, the median rates were even more sluggish – rising by slightly less than 0.45 per cent to $517 an hour. But despite relatively stagnant fee rates across the US’s vast array of state jurisdictions, the Journal’s researchers maintained that ‘for high-end legal work, large law firms remain in the driver's seat over hourly rates’.