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Kirkland is showing how much money now sits in disputes, with alternative fee deals driving about 30% of its litigation revenue—more than $1 billion last year. Debevoise is building the other side of the trade, hiring two Davis Polk lawyers to staff a client-facing AI-risk product, while Clifford Chance and Simpson Thacher kept extending finance and private equity benches in Houston and Boston.
On the client side, the AI buildout is turning into a financing story with real risk attached. Goldman Sachs is anchoring Nvidia’s $500 billion push to fund AI compute, even as troubled loans at listed private-credit funds hit their highest level since 2017 and the Cl0p group claimed data theft from roughly 50 companies including Shell, GE, and Fiserv. Stripe agreed to buy OpenRouter for more than $7 billion, and Anthropic’s revenue jumped about 14-fold. Long-dated borrowing costs keep climbing in the US as China’s second half of the year is showing weakness.
Now, on to what matters for your practice today.
Today’s Talking Points
-Kirkland runs ~30% of its litigation revenue (>$1bn) through alternative fees; Debevoise hires Davis Polk pair for its STAAR AI-risk platform
-Lateral Moves: Clifford Chance adds Jones Day debt finance partner in Houston; Simpson Thacher lands a Ropes PE partner in Boston
-Goldman Sachs anchors Nvidia’s $500bn AI-infrastructure financing; Nvidia halves OpenAI data-center backing to ~$120bn
-Private credit strains: troubled loans hit a median 2.8%, the highest since 2017, in software and 2020–21 vintage borrowers
-Cl0p claims data theft from ~50 companies including Shell, Philips, GE, and Fiserv, tied to PTC software flaws
-Japan bidding wars spread as EQT raises its Kakaku.com offer against Bain and LY; Stripe buys OpenRouter for $7bn+
-Anthropic Q2 revenue jumps ~14x to $11.5bn; prediction markets Kalshi and Polymarket face consumer-protection suits
-30-year yields sit at 5.22%, the highest since 2001; China’s H2 opens weak; markets still weigh a September Fed hike
Talent Strategy
Latest Moves
Clifford Chance hired debt finance partner Matt Jones from Jones Day in Houston, extending its US finance build-out.
Simpson Thacher hired private equity partner Jessica Cooney from Ropes & Gray in Boston, taking the office to about 50 lawyers since its 2024 launch, with a larger local space planned.
Debevoise & Plimpton hired Mari Grace and Kendall Howell as counsel from Davis Polk, in New York and Washington, to support its AI-risk product.
What today's moves tell us: as finance and private equity benches remain the prize, AI-risk advisory is now pulling partners in its own right.
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Operations and Strategy
Firms are turning fee structures and AI into growth engines.
Kirkland has expanded fixed-fee and other alternative-fee arrangements across its litigation practice, and the payoff is showing up on the top line: about 30% of litigation revenue, more than $1 billion last year, now runs through these structures. The shift positions the firm to win disputes work from clients who want price certainty, and it puts a number on how much high-end litigation spending is moving away from the pure hourly model.
AI is the other pillar. Debevoise is testing a proprietary platform, STAAR, that gives clients direct access to its lawyers’ guidance on AI legal and business risk, with about 10 users including Blackstone, Capital One, Evercore, GSK, and New York Life. The firm hired Mari Grace and Kendall Howell from Davis Polk to staff the effort.
ArentFox Schiff launched FoxAI, pairing its own tools with Harvey, Microsoft Copilot, and DeepJudge, and says roughly 90% of its attorneys use AI regularly.
Practices
Private Equity, Private Credit, and AI Finance
The borrowed money to fund AI is starting now showing the risk profile of credit cycles, and that is where the mandates are forming. Market participants are watching Goldman assemble a syndicate for Nvidia's compute financing at the same time troubled loans climb in private credit, a split that points to heavy work on both origination and, increasingly, workouts. Sponsors and lenders are negotiating structure, covenants, and backstops far more carefully than they were a year ago; these are the conditions where sophisticated finance teams show their skills.
Selected Press:
Goldman Sachs is anchoring Nvidia's $500bn AI-infrastructure financing, offering junior capital and private credit and placing debt with private funds; Nvidia may backstop up to ~25% and has cut its OpenAI data-center backing to about $120bn.
Troubled loans at listed private-credit funds hit a median 2.8%, the highest since 2017, concentrated in software and highly leveraged 2020–21 borrowers; several BDCs cut lending, waived fees, or marked down holdings.
EQT's EdgeConneX is asking banks to guarantee $2.5bn in power costs through a letter-of-credit facility, a sign of how financing now reaches into the grid.
M&A and Dealmaking
Cross-border competition keeps growing, and boards are being pushed to run real auctions rather than accept the first friendly bid. Dealmakers are treating Japan as a live contest and pricing AI targets on talent rather than tidy financial metrics, which raises execution and diligence risk and the advisory work that comes with it.
Selected Press:
EQT raised its offer for Japan's Kakaku.com against Bain Capital and SoftBank-backed LY; Freshfields' Takeshi Nakao calls bidding wars “the new shape of the Japanese market” after 2023 rules pushed boards to seek the highest bid.
Stripe agreed to buy LLM API startup OpenRouter for over $7bn; Cooley's Peter Werner says fast AI deals are “unmoored” from financial metrics as buyers price talent under compressed timelines.
Volkswagen is preparing to cut its Traton stake from 87.5% toward 75% (a ~$19bn holding) as part of its restructuring.
A Bezos- and Saverin-backed consortium agreed to buy 30% of Liverpool FC from Fenway Sports Group at a ~$6bn valuation; the type of deals that Kirkland, Latham, and Davis Polk built sports practices for.
Anthropic's Q2 revenue jumped about 14-fold to $11.5bn, with an IPO valuation said to hinge on a $190–200bn 2028 revenue forecast.
Regulatory and Cybersecurity
Regulators and hackers remind clients of cyber related liability driving general counsels to recalibrate exposure across securities, enforcement, and breach response. Boards are watching where a data incident or a regulatory theory can slow strategy or reshape deal execution risk.
Selected Press:
The Cl0p group claimed data theft from ~50 companies including Shell, Philips, GE, and Fiserv, possibly via PTC Windchill and FlexPLM flaws; Fiserv found no evidence, others are investigating.
Kalshi and Polymarket face consumer-protection suits as a new front in the fight over who regulates prediction markets; Kalshi also hit back at a Nevada geofencing fine.
Holland & Knight failed to toss a suit alleging one of its partners helped the former leader of bankrupt GWG Holdings loot the bond seller.
Where the Work Sits
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The clearest growing fee pool is AI-linked finance and private credit. Goldman's Nvidia syndicate, EdgeConneX's $2.5bn power guarantee, and the AI shadow-credit debate route work to leveraged finance, funds, and structured credit teams, while the jump in troubled loans to a 2017 high starts to feed restructuring, workout, and lender-side advisory mandates. Earlier private-credit growth leaned on spread; the next phase rewards firms that can structure through borrower problems, not just underwrite them.
M&A keeps feeding the fee machine and it is turning more contested. EQT's raised Kakaku.com bid, Volkswagen's Traton sell-down, and the Liverpool FC stake sale point to cross-border, sponsor, and sports mandates across deal, financing, and regulatory work.
Capital markets keep generating securities and fund-formation work, from Anthropic's listing math to the OpenAI-Nvidia financing chain and the Paramount-Warner arb trade. Data breaches and prediction-market suits are their own mandate pool: the Cl0p claims drive incident response, notification, and follow-on litigation, while Kalshi and Polymarket keep regulatory and licensing teams busy as agencies and courts sort out authority.
Global Markets
Long-dated borrowing costs sit at multi-decade highs even as inflation cools, leaving clients to judge how open the financing window really is. Dealmakers are weighing whether the Fed hikes in September against Goldman's view that markets are too hawkish, while sponsors track a weaker China and rising global yields for deal timing. Bankers and lawyers are reading the AI borrowing binge and its shadow-credit backstops as a signal that financing terms, not just rates, will drive the next round of structuring.
Selected Press:
The US sold 30-year bonds at 5.22%, the highest since 2001, as global long-end rates climb and traders fret over ~$70bn of AI shadow-credit backstops.
Goldman says markets are too hawkish on Fed hikes as inflation cools; Apollo's Torsten Slok notes tariff refunds are lifting growth, with Atlanta Fed GDPNow at 4.3%.
China's second half opened weak, with industrial output, consumption, and investment all missing and new-home prices falling faster.
Japan's growth slowed to 1.1% annualized with flat consumption, keeping a September BOJ hike in play amid a weak yen.
Stories to Watch
UK July CPI (Wednesday) — seen accelerating to ~2.9%, the first rise in four months, with implications for BOE timing.
Retail earnings — Klarna and Home Depot (Tue), Target and TJX (Wed), Walmart and Alibaba (Thu) as reads on the consumer and AI demand.
Fed September path — traders weigh a hike while Goldman argues markets are too hawkish; a key input for financing costs.
Meta social-media addiction trial (Oakland) — an eight-person advisory jury is seated, testing product-liability theories against Instagram and YouTube.
China monthly activity data — confirmation of a weaker second-half start that shapes sponsor and cross-border deal timing.
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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