In accordance with an embodiment, described herein is a system and method for partitioning classification resources in a network device in a high performance network. Classification resources can be configured into a plurality of levels of partitions, with one or more hardware-based partitions configured to store flow entries associated with frequently-used or performance-sensitive flows, and a firmware-based partition to access large lookup tables stored in one or more additional memories for classification resource scalability. A lookup key can be used for search for a flow entry match in the hardware-based partitions first. If there is a miss, the lookup key can be presented to the firmware-based partition for further search. Results from the firmware-based level can be dispatched back to a hardware-based parser for further processing. Flow entries can be moved between lookup tables by a partition management block based on utilization of the flow entries.