Largest Law Firms in Malaysia 2022

We usher in 2023 by reviewing the largest law firms in Malaysia in 2022. This compares with the previous editions (2021, 2020, 2019, and 2018).

We refer to the number of lawyers based on the Malaysian Bar legal directory as at to date.

The Year 2022 in Review

The 3 Largest Malaysian Law Firms

As a repeat of last year’s listings, the three largest law firms in Malaysia continue to be Zaid Ibrahim & Co, Skrine, and Shearn Delamore & Co.

Zaid Ibrahim & Co maintains its top ranking with the largest number of lawyers: 123 lawyers in total for the year 2022. However, this is a drop from last year’s total of 155 lawyers. The drop in its lawyers could have been due to the development below on the ZICO Law network joining the KPMG organisation.

Nonetheless, Zaid Ibrahim & Co, with its offices in Kuala Lumpur, Kelantan, Penang, and Johor Bahru, maintains its top rank ever since The Malaysian Lawyer kept track of the largest law firms in Malaysia.

Second in the rankings, Skrine continues to be the largest Kuala Lumpur firm with 114 lawyers. Shearn Delamore & Co follows closely with 113 lawyers.

KPMG International + ZICO Law

On 1 December 2022, KPMG International announced that a number of law firms and teams from the ZICO Law network had joined its network of firms. This meant that more than 275 lawyers across the ZICO Law network joined over 2,900 legal professionals in the KPMG global organisation.

For the Malaysian firm of Zaid Ibrahim & Co in particular, Zaid Ibrahim & Co would continue to be a law firm but would be in association with KPMG legal. Malaysia’s legal framework does not allow for multi-disciplinary practices and where the law firm (in the form of a sole proprietorship or partnership) would have to still exclusively practise law.

Ahead of or timed with Zaid Ibrahim & Co joining the KPMG network, several of its litigation lawyers had already left the firm to form the firm of Firoz Julian, with 8 litigators. The intellectual property team has established Linda Wang Su & Boo with 9 IP lawyers.

Foreign Lawyers

With Malaysia’s liberalised legal environment in terms of foreign law firms and foreign lawyers, we saw the addition of two additional foreign lawyers.

In late 2021, Azmi & Associates announced that it had employed its second foreign-qualified lawyer to join its ranks. In 2022, Skrine announced that it welcomed its foreign-qualifed lawyer, Dr Harald Sippel, to join them and to head its European and Northeast Asian Desk.

Malaysia’s Largest Law Firms

With this list tracking law firms with more than 50 lawyers, the list has now grown to the top 15 largest law firms. All images are from the law firms’ websites.