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Kirkland made up 196 partners in a quiet round while rivals kept poaching: Crowell & Moring, Blank Rome, Haynes Boone, Baker Donelson and Troutman Pepper Locke all added partners. Weil Gotshal's partners met virtually as merger talks dragged on while Sullivan & Cromwell hunted premium London space.
On the client side, dealmaking held firm — Salesforce's $5.7 billion Braze buy, Tradeweb's $1.97 billion Trumid deal and Prudential's $4 billion emerging-markets exit even as data-center IPOs stumbled and Virginia moved to block NextEra's $67 billion Dominion takeover.
Now, on to what matters for your practice today.
Today’s Talking Points
-Kirkland makes up 196 partners in a quiet round as laterals land at Crowell, Blank Rome, Haynes Boone, Baker Donelson and Troutman
-Weil's partners convene as merger talks continue; Sullivan & Cromwell hunts premium London space
-L'Oréal taps Weil and Ducera to carve talc liabilities into a sellable entity
-Data-center IPOs stall: Elice sinks 32%, Firmus pulled, Nscale eyes a $45B Anthropic compute deal
-Salesforce–Braze $5.7B, Tradeweb–Trumid $1.97B and Prudential–CNP $4B reshape the deal pipeline
-Virginia moves to block NextEra's $67B Dominion takeover without a rate freeze
-Anthropic's AI-training fair-use fight reaches a split-court hearing
-UK inflation at an 11-month high, French bond risk at a 15-year high, FOMC next week
Talent Strategy
Latest Moves
Crowell & Moring hired M&A partner Jeryl Bowers from Sheppard Mullin in Los Angeles.
Blank Rome took Hogan Lovells commodities partners Christopher Doyle (corporate, M&A and securities) and Marvin Goldstein (finance, restructuring and bankruptcy) in New York.
Haynes Boone added Macfarlanes private capital partner Chris Acton to its UK finance practice in London.
Baker Donelson brought on former White House governance lawyer Kenya Parrish-Dixon as a commercial-litigation shareholder in Washington.
Greenberg Traurig recruited finance partner Andrew Jacobs in New York and Westchester.
Troutman Pepper Locke added insurance-litigation partners Jason Gosselin, Kate Villanueva and Christopher Petillo in Philadelphia.
Tucker Ellis hired finance partner Nicole Goodman in Chicago.
Buchalter added real estate partner Stephanie Nation and litigation partner Charles Clark in Orange County.
Redgrave recruited former DOJ antitrust lawyer Larry Reicher for merger-clearance and Second Request discovery.
Kirkland & Ellis also made up 196 partners in a quiet promotions round, 25 of them in London, with corporate and funds the deepest classes — a signal of where the firm sees its billable growth.
What today’s moves tell us: firms are paying up for litigation, finance and insurance benches and rewarding their own ranks, even as one elite New York shop’s partners gather amid merger talks.
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Operations and Strategy
Firms are expanding and defending at once: one New York leader is weighing a merger while others chase space, promotions and higher margins.
Weil Gotshal & Manges held an all-partner meeting as merger talks continued; Bloomberg Law reports the firm is negotiating a tie-up with another firm, with an announcement possible within days, though the talks could still fall apart. The meeting follows a run of senior corporate and London exits that has left the partnership unsettled.
Kirkland’s 196-partner promotion round and Robins Kaplan’s decision to lift clerkship bonuses above the Big Law standard show firms competing on both pay and prestige hires. Sullivan & Cromwell is in advanced talks to lease space in one of London’s priciest buildings, a sign that US firms’ UK push is driving demand for high-end offices.
Freshfields is pressing a US profitability drive, telling partners everyone has to prove they are worth what they are paid. In the UK, law firms, consultancies and hedge funds are reworking their partnership structures and talking to HMRC after BlueCrest’s loss at the Supreme Court reset how such partnerships are taxed.
Practices
Corporate M&A and Private Equity
Dealmakers and sponsors are leaning back in, but with discipline. Strategic buyers and corporate clients are reshaping portfolios through carve-outs, cross-border deals and emerging-market exits, pointing general counsel and sell-side advisers toward a busier calendar of sale, financing and structuring work.
Selected Press:
Salesforce agreed to buy marketing platform Braze for $5.7 billion, with Wachtell, Covington and Davis Polk advising.
Tradeweb Markets agreed to buy credit-trading platform Trumid for $1.97 billion.
Prudential Financial agreed to sell its Brazil and Mexico units to CNP Assurances for $4 billion, trimming its emerging-markets footprint.
Blackstone and Warburg Pincus are exploring a $10 billion sale of banking-infrastructure fintech IntraFi.
Eldridge Industries is in advanced talks to buy DXC Technology’s insurance-software unit for $2.4 billion.
L’Oréal is working with Weil Gotshal and Ducera Partners to carve its talc and chemical tort claims into a new entity it would sell to an outside investor.
Nordic outbound M&A more than doubled to about $155 billion this year, with EQT’s A$9.3 billion Cleanaway buyout among the latest.
Starboard Value built a stake in Solstice Advanced Materials after it scrapped a $14.5 billion merger with Element Solutions.
Tikehau Capital is seeking a strategic investor as private-credit managers chase permanent capital.
Regulatory and Antitrust
Regulators and state officials are reshaping how big deals close. Utility mergers, ad-tech data access and disclosure timing are becoming gating items, a reminder for executives and dealmakers that approval risk now sits at the center of deal design, not the end of it.
Selected Press:
Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger said she won’t back NextEra Energy’s $67 billion takeover of Dominion Energy without a six-year residential rate freeze; commission staff urged regulators to deny it.
The FTC required Publicis to give rivals equal access to LiveRamp data as a condition of its deal.
Nomura was fined over late Commerzbank disclosures tied to UniCredit’s bid.
Capital Markets and Private Credit
The AI-financing trade is cooling from euphoria to discipline. Investors are repricing data-center risk through stalled listings, pricier default insurance and heavier hidden debt, which pushes value for issuers and lenders toward structuring, disclosure and lender-protection work.
Selected Press:
Data-center firm Elice sank 32% in its Korea debut, and Nvidia-backed Firmus Grid’s failed IPO drew an information request from Australia’s market watchdog.
Nscale, seeking about a $30 billion IPO, is in talks to sell roughly $45 billion of computing power to Anthropic.
Anthropic disclosed about $16.3 billion of first-half revenue against an $80.7 billion net loss and may spend up to $750 billion on compute ahead of its listing.
S&P Global warned hyperscalers likely carry more AI-linked debt than they disclose, and trading in default insurance on tech debt surged.
UK pension providers hold just £11.1 billion of private assets, short of the Mansion House 5% target — a slow build for private-capital fundraising.
Litigation and Investigations
AI copyright, consumer-safety and enforcement matters are turning into balance-sheet exposure. Boards and general counsel are treating them as strategic risk, feeding intellectual-property, environmental, labor and white-collar mandates.
Selected Press:
Anthropic and music publishers led by Universal Music argued a closely watched AI-training fair-use case before a San Jose judge; with courts split and billions at stake, the ruling could ripple across dozens of parallel suits after Anthropic’s $1.5 billion author settlement.
A federal judge let an NAACP suit proceed against Elon Musk’s xAI over environmental permits tied to one of its data centers.
Instacart parent Maplebear agreed to pay $5 million to settle a federal probe into discrimination against American workers in its recruiting.
Where the Work Sits
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The day’s activity clusters around three pressure points. First, capital-markets and private-credit mandates are riding a wave of refinancing and opportunistic issuance: with spreads still tight and investors hunting yield, borrowers are pulling forward maturities and tapping alternative lenders, creating a steady pipeline of leveraged-finance, direct-lending and structured-product work.
Second, cross-border M&A and antitrust filings are keeping competition and corporate teams busy on both sides of the Atlantic, especially where AI-adjacent assets or data-center infrastructure are involved.
Third, litigation dockets are filling with AI-related intellectual-property and environmental disputes that feed both trial and regulatory-investigation practices.
For managing partners planning headcount, the signal is that technology-sector corporate, energy and infrastructure finance, and IP litigation are the desks most likely to stay busy into year-end. Lateral hiring at the partner level, particularly in private credit, data-center project finance and AI-related litigation, continues to run ahead of historical norms.
Firms that have built integrated “platform” teams spanning M&A, tax, regulatory and finance are winning a disproportionate share of the largest mandates, because clients increasingly want a single relationship partner who can coordinate across practice lines. That structural advantage will widen as deal complexity grows.
One trend to watch: the convergence of capital-markets and regulatory work around AI governance. Companies preparing IPO or debt offerings now face disclosure obligations on AI risk that did not exist eighteen months ago, pulling securities lawyers into what used to be a pure tech-regulatory lane.
Global Markets
Clients are watching a sharper rate-and-geopolitics backdrop. Executives and fund managers are weighing financing windows carefully as the AI trade cools and yields climb, while boards track oil and trade risk ahead of next week’s Fed meeting.
Selected Press:
UK inflation hit an 11-month high, keeping the Bank of England on track to raise rates and complicating Chancellor John Healey’s budget.
France’s bond-risk gauge touched a 15-year high as protests and deficit worries mounted; Treasury Secretary Bessent played down any spillover.
US housing fell into a deep freeze, with starts at a four-month low and pending sales down 7.3%, as 7% mortgage rates bite.
Brent crude held near $110 before easing on a reported US-Iran plan; RBC flagged escalation risk once the November midterms pass.
US-Mexico trade talks stalled on steel and aluminum while Washington signaled it was close to a deal with India.
Stories to Watch
AI-copyright rulings. The Anthropic–Universal Music hearing could set the template for fair-use analysis across dozens of pending AI-training suits; a broad ruling either way will reshape IP-litigation pipelines for years.
Data-center IPO pipeline. CoreWeave’s postponed offering and Crusoe Energy’s confidential filing suggest the window is narrowing; if either prices below range, expect follow-on offerings to stall and private-credit lenders to fill the gap.
Treasury-yield trajectory. The 30-year above 5 % is repricing leveraged buyouts, real-estate refinancings and project-finance models in real time; every 25-basis-point move reshuffles which deals pencil.
Partner-lateral market. Hogan Lovells’ 37-partner class and continued cross-firm poaching signal that demand for senior talent exceeds supply in private credit, energy-transition and AI-related practices; watch for compensation wars to intensify before year-end.
Cross-border antitrust convergence. Simultaneous EU and U.S. reviews of semiconductor and AI-infrastructure deals are creating a new subspecialty; firms that can staff parallel filings from a single team have a pricing advantage.
Gulf sovereign-wealth deployment. Large-ticket acquisitions of U.S. technology and infrastructure assets by Middle East funds are pulling in CFIUS, tax and real-estate teams; the pipeline shows no sign of slowing and is becoming a durable practice driver.
That’s the rundown. See you next where law meets the markets.
-The BigLaw Markets Team
*DISCLAIMER: BigLaw Markets analyzes publicly available information, filings, press releases, and news stories published by reputable media sources to deliver content that highlights demand for legal services. Certain production processes may be supported by proprietary AI tools and are subject to human editorial judgement and review.
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