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Kirkland & Ellis poached Latham's London secondaries partner Edward Coates, and Goodwin pulled real estate and funds partner Rebecca Lock out of Kirkland in Philadelphia. Firms are also reworking the junior pipeline with Paul Weiss, Simpson Thacher and Milbank now recruiting summer associates in students' first months of law school, drawing an ABA backlash. Latham and Paul Weiss selected as "gold" panel firms advising EQT.
On the client side, dealmakers are keeping busy. Stripe agreed to buy AI firm OpenRouter for more than $7bn, JBS moved to take Pilgrim's Pride private, and CPPIB is routing capital into Blackstone, KKR and EQT infrastructure funds. The FT flagged mounting private-credit distress. Treasury Secretary Bessent doubled long-term debt buybacks as US public debt neared $40tn and long-end yields eased, while UK inflation rose to 2.9%.
Now, on to what matters for your practice today.
Today’s Talking Points
-Kirkland takes Latham's London secondaries partner Edward Coates; Goodwin pulls Kirkland real estate partner Rebecca Lock into Philadelphia
-Paul Weiss, Simpson Thacher and Milbank move summer-associate recruiting into law students' first months, drawing ABA criticism
-EQT names Latham and Paul Weiss among eight new "gold" panel firms as it formalizes outside counsel
-Stripe agrees to buy OpenRouter for $7bn+; JBS moves to take Pilgrim's Pride private; Thoma Bravo keeps up its software run
-CPPIB commits to Blackstone, KKR and EQT infrastructure funds as AI power demand lifts megadeals
-The Financial Times flags mounting private-credit distress — markdowns, defaults, and redemptions — as insurers' exposure grows
-US agencies warn of an active hacking threat to Siemens water-system controllers; data-center growth sparks IP battles
-Bessent doubles Treasury buybacks as US debt nears $40tn and long-end yields ease; UK inflation hits 2.9%
Talent Strategy
Latest Moves
Kirkland & Ellis hired secondaries partner Edward Coates from Latham & Watkins in London, a day-one move into the growing secondaries market.
Goodwin recruited real estate partner Rebecca Lock from Kirkland & Ellis in Philadelphia, building its investment-funds and real estate bench.
DLA Piper added white-collar, investigations and government-enforcement partner Eric Bruce in Washington.
Hunton Andrews Kurth hired bankruptcy and restructuring partner Ian Roberts in Dallas.
Polsinelli added private equity M&A shareholder Kevin Uhler in Chicago, and Greenberg Traurig added litigation shareholder Prashant Kolluri in Chicago.
Moore & Van Allen launched a Washington office with national security partner Erica Bakies.
What today's moves tell us: hiring is tilting toward private capital, secondaries, restructuring, and national security, with London, Chicago, and Washington the active markets.
Check our Rolodex newsletter delivered on Monday at 7:30 am for a weekly overview of the lateral market and executive moves.
Operations and Strategy
Firms are reworking how they recruit and strengthen client relationships as demand stays strong at a time when AI is reshaping the junior ranks.
The summer-associate timeline is compressing. Paul Weiss, Simpson Thacher and Milbank are recruiting first-year students within their first months of law school, accelerating a cycle that once began after the first year. NALP found 85% of second-year summer offers were made before July of students' first year in 2025, up from 34% a year earlier. The ABA, students, and some firm leaders say the timeline harms wellbeing and forces choices before grades or practice interests exist, even as firms rethink hiring and training as AI changes what junior lawyers do.
Big Law seek coveted spots in the top-tier sponsors’ roster. EQT finalized its legal panel, adding eight firms including Latham and Paul Weiss to a "gold" tier alongside a previously named "platinum" relationship group. The move consolidates spend among a defined set of outside counsel and rewards firms that can deploy deal teams across jurisdictions quickly.
Practices
Corporate M&A and Private Equity
Dealmakers and sponsors are leaning into technology, infrastructure, and take-privates, and the pipeline points to busier sell-side, financing, and antitrust calendars. Private equity is joining a roughly $3.5tn M&A run this year, per Goldman's Matt McClure, and sponsors that did the analytical work through the slow stretch are moving decisively on assets they tracked for years.
Selected Press:
Stripe agreed to buy AI infrastructure firm OpenRouter for more than $7bn, with a US trio of firms advising.
JBS proposed acquiring the 18% of Pilgrim's Pride it does not already own, a move that would take the poultry producer private.
Thoma Bravo kept up its software run with a $4bn-plus Accelerant take-private and the sale of Command Alkon to Francisco Partners.
Copart is competing with GTCR and Veritas Capital for insurance-software firm CCC Intelligent, while Banca Monte dei Paschi's board weighs Intesa's approach.
CPPIB is committing to Blackstone, KKR and EQT infrastructure funds as AI-driven power demand and larger deal sizes strengthen sponsors' hand.
Private Credit, Capital Markets, and Restructuring
A split between a busy listing pipeline and rising private-credit stress is shaping mandates. The FT's warning on direct-lending distress points fund managers and their counsel toward valuation disputes, redemption fights, and workouts, even as capital-markets teams stay busy on a global IPO pipeline.
Selected Press:
The FT flagged persistent private-credit risk — markdowns, defaults, outflows, rising troubled-loan values, and insurance-company exposure — urging tighter investor and regulatory scrutiny.
Anthropic's pre-IPO revolving credit facility is set to climb past $10bn ahead of a planned listing; the University of California offloaded $1bn of private equity stakes.
The global IPO pipeline built with KME's Cunova eyeing a Frankfurt listing near €1bn, India's Upstox and Singapore's SDC Capital weighing raises, and Unitree surging 600% on its Shanghai debut; defense-tech Lyntris fell 11% after a downsized $297.5m IPO.
Thoma Bravo is weighing concessions in a $2bn Sophos refinancing, a sign of harder documentation and lender negotiation.
Regulatory, Cybersecurity, and IP
General counsel are pricing in more compliance, investigations, and diligence work as agencies flag critical-infrastructure threats and AI-driven data-center growth spawns IP fights. This is the kind of complexity where boards lean hardest on trusted outside counsel.
Selected Press:
US agencies warned of an active threat to Siemens S7 programmable logic controllers used in water and infrastructure systems; the NSA, FBI, Department of Energy, EPA and CISA issued the advisory after suspected Iranian attacks on local water utilities.
Data-center expansion is unleashing IP battles as build-outs accelerate, Bloomberg Law reports, opening patent and licensing disputes.
Marvell granted Google the right to buy up to $12.2bn of its shares as part of a chip supply deal.
Litigation
Coordinated state actions and platform litigation keep mass-tort and appellate teams busy, and general counsel at large platforms are recalibrating exposure as procedural rulings shape the fights.
Selected Press:
An early ruling narrowed the opening phase of Meta's multistate social-media addiction trial, a marker for how coordinated consumer cases will proceed.
Consumer litigation funders that advance living expenses to personal-injury plaintiffs are drawing fresh scrutiny over fees and disclosure.
Where the Work Sits
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Private credit and restructuring keep filling the budget projections. Private credit distress signals — markdowns, defaults, redemptions, and insurer exposure — route work to valuation disputes, redemption mechanics, workout, and lender-side teams. Restructuring is now a proactive liability management and balance-sheet engineering as much as a distress exercise, and that is where the sophisticated matters concentrate.
Corporate M&A and financing keep earning their fees. Stripe-OpenRouter, JBS-Pilgrim's, Thoma Bravo's software run, and CPPIB's fund commitments fold sell-side, financing, and fund-formation mandates together, while a global IPO pipeline keeps capital-markets teams engaged. Clients increasingly want counsel who can move a deal team across jurisdictions quickly and price regulatory friction into the thesis from day one.
Regulatory, cyber, and IP work is also broadening. The Siemens infrastructure advisory pulls in incident-response, enforcement, and compliance teams, while data-center IP battles and the Marvell-Google share structure add diligence and licensing mandates as the AI build-out accelerates.
Product-liability and platform litigation rounds out the demand map. The procedural fights in Meta's multistate trial set a template other defendants will watch and keep mass-tort and appellate teams busy.
Global Markets
Falling long-end (30-yr) yields and a Treasury buyback push meet sticky UK inflation, giving clients a clearer read on the financing window.
Corner office executives are weighing whether Bessent's expanded buybacks and easing yields reopen room for accretive financing into the fall, while sponsors track the Canada tariff truce and UK inflation for deal and listing timing. Finance executives are reading a debt load near $40tn as a sign that an interventionist treasury department, not just the Fed’s signals, will keep shaping structures.
Selected Press:
Treasury's Bessent more than doubled longer-term debt buybacks as yields sat near multi-decade highs; long-dated yields fell in response, though analysts called the move more symbol than fix.
US public debt neared $40tn as markets debated how durable the buyback gambit will prove.
UK inflation rose to 2.9% in July as energy bills climbed, though services inflation eased to 3.4%.
US single-family housing starts fell 9.9% in July to the lowest since 2022, while factory output hit a four-year high on AI-related investment.
Trump paused 50% tariffs on about $20bn of Canadian goods for three days as the two sides work toward a deal.
Stories to Watch
Walmart earnings (today) — a consumer read as housing cools and tariffs shift.
Moderna and Merck melanoma vaccine — the mRNA cancer vaccine met its trial goal, a signal for life-sciences deal and IP work.
Stripe-OpenRouter close and Anthropic's pre-IPO financing — barometers for AI-infrastructure M&A and the listing pipeline.
US-Canada tariff deadline — a three-day pause that could snap back to 50% levies on about $20bn of goods.
China's low-cost AI push — Bloomberg flags a $4 answer to Claude, a cost angle for the AI buildout race.
SK Hynix $28.6bn buyback — a read on AI-memory demand and chipmaker confidence.
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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