Good afternoon,

Compensation is back in focus. Milbank is stacking associate bonuses of up to $25,000 on top of last month’s raises to $455,000 at the top of scale, pressing rivals to follow. Kirkland & Ellis launches a restructuring group in Dallas, and DLA Piper launched a congressional investigations practice ahead of the midterms. Big Law is also quietly weighing outside capital.

On the client side, dealmaking keeps heating up even as tech wobbles. Ares Management is in talks to buy Leonard Green & Partners in a move that would quadruple its private equity book, PJT Partners posted record M&A fees, and a chip rout knocked Nvidia off its perch, leaving Apple the most valuable company. The Fed is expected to hold rates tomorrow, Wednesday.

Now, on to what matters for your practice today.

Today’s Talking Points

-Milbank stacks up to $25,000 bonuses on $455,000 raises; only McDermott Will & Schulte has matched so far

-Laterals land at Baker McKenzie, Paul Weiss, Sullivan & Cromwell, Freshfields and Simpson Thacher; Kirkland builds a Dallas restructuring group from Jones Day

-DLA Piper launches a congressional investigations practice; Big Law quietly weighs outside capital

-Ares in talks for Leonard Green; PJT posts record M&A fees; Barclays investment-bank revenue jumps 32%

-Nvidia's $750B in deals revives circular-financing fears; ASML slides on a China DUV-tool report

-J&J to settle 76,000 talc suits; Trump asks the Supreme Court to allow a mail-in-ballot crackdown

-Central banks are on the spotlight this week: US Fed (Wed), BOJ and BOE (Thu)

Talent Strategy

Latest Moves

What today's moves tell us: laterals cluster in restructuring, capital markets and antitrust as firms add transactional and regulatory depth, and the fight for that talent is running alongside a fresh round of associate pay increases.

Operations and Strategy

Firms are competing on pay, practice build-outs, and, increasingly studying outside capital.

Milbank is paying seniority-based bonuses of up to $25,000 to associates, starting at $6,000 for the most junior, on top of raises last month that lifted its scale to $455,000 for senior associates. Recruiters read it as Milbank cementing its position as a comp leader and pressuring peers to match by year-end. So far only a few firms, including McDermott Will & Schulte, have followed the raises, and the risk is a broader bidding war for talent.

The bigger structural question is capital. Most Big Law leaders still say they have no plans to take outside investment, but advisers argue the surveys are already dated. Technology spending and the talent war are pushing more firms to at least run the numbers on private capital, even if none has publicly closed a deal. For now the debate is quiet, but the direction of travel is toward more firms having the conversation.

On practice build-outs, Kirkland & Ellis planted a restructuring flag in Dallas with two Jones Day partners, extending its bench in a market where distress and liability-management work keeps flowing. DLA Piper launched a congressional investigations practice co-led by Brandon Rios and Jake Greenberg, betting that oversight and enforcement exposure will rise into the midterms.

Practices

Private Equity and Asset Managers

Consolidation among the managers themselves is now a live source of work. Ares Management's talks to buy Leonard Green & Partners would more than quadruple its private equity assets and hand it a retail-friendly buyout platform, the kind of scale-driven combination dealmakers expect more of as listed managers chase diversification and fee streams. Sponsors are still taking companies private, which points to sell-side, financing, fund-level and regulatory mandates concentrated on a small set of firms.

Selected Press:

M&A and Capital Markets

The advisory pipeline is firming up. PJT Partners posted record fees on an M&A boom and Barclays' investment bank booked a 32% revenue jump on dealmaking and trading, the kind of prints that tell executives and dealmakers the window is open. This is a buyer-led market, and acquirers who did the work during the slow stretch are moving first. Capital-markets plumbing is busy too, from a blockbuster China chip listing to exchanges pushing into round-the-clock trading.

Selected Press:

Technology, Antitrust and Trade

AI financing and chip geopolitics are converging into diligence, antitrust and national-security work. Export controls and supply-chain risk are back on boards' radar after a report that China is producing an advanced chipmaking tool and news that Taiwan detained an Nvidia employee. General counsel are watching a new US-led telecom bloc as a signal on where trade lines are hardening. Nvidia's $750B in new deals revived worries about circular financing across the AI complex, even as it wrote fresh equity checks into Korea and into Ilya Sutskever's Safe Superintelligence.

Selected Press:

Litigation and Enforcement

Mass torts and enforcement are all generating mandates. Johnson & Johnson is moving to resolve roughly 76,000 talc claims, a settlement of that size drawing product-liability, bankruptcy-adjacent and insurance work.

Selected Press:

Where the Work Sits

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The deepest pool this news cycle sits in private equity and among the managers themselves. Ares-Leonard Green, the Luxfer take-private and the Tavistock deal concentrate M&A, financing, fund-formation and regulatory mandates, and manager-on-manager consolidation adds a layer of governance and integration work that does not exist when sponsors only bought companies. Restructuring is the quieter engine underneath: Kirkland's Dallas build and Simpson Thacher's capital-structure hire point to steady demand for liability management and balance-sheet work that increasingly starts well before a company is in distress.

Capital-markets and exchange activity is generating its own mandates. A record China listing, a 24-hour trading push, and a ratings upgrade for a major trading firm all carry securities, regulatory and market-structure work, and the record advisory fees at PJT and a trading surge at Barclays confirm the deal calendar is filling for corporate and financing teams.

Technology and trade are where regulatory risk is concentrating. The chip rout, the ASML-China report, an Nvidia detention in Taiwan, and a new US-led 6G bloc keep export-control, CFIUS, antitrust and national-security practices busy, and AI's circular financing raises diligence and disclosure questions that land on deal and credit teams. J&J's talc settlement, the mail-in-ballot appeal, and the EY fine round out mass-tort, election-law and audit-liability demand.

Global Markets

Clients are repositioning around an AI trade that just cracked and a Fed that could surprise, but is not expected to do so. Executives and CFOs are weighing financing and deal timing into Wednesday's rate decision, while watching whether the chip selloff is a rotation or the start of something broader before hyperscaler earnings land. Clients are also tracking a cooling in oil and a sharper US-China economic standoff that is reshaping supply-chain and capex plans.

Selected Press:

Stories to Watch

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 newsletters that highlight the drivers of demand for legal services.