Good afternoon,
Restructuring and litigation benches are today's story. Weil Gotshal & Manges is bringing back Debra M. Sinclair in US restructuring, O'Melveny hired Linklaters' Penelope Jensen in New York, and Holland & Knight, Duane Morris, Alston & Bird and Morrison Foerster all added partners. Duane Morris settled a suit over how it classified non-equity partners, and the Education Department moved closer to ending the ABA's law-school accreditation monopoly.
On the client side, private credit is straining: Blackstone shelved a $3bn deal to offload aging fund stakes, and Cox Capital is bidding for discounted BDC shares as redemptions build. Oracle invoked force majeure on a New Mexico data center for OpenAI, and the US 10-year yield pushed past 5%.
Now, on to what matters for your practice today.
Today’s Talking Points
-Weil and O'Melveny build restructuring benches; Holland & Knight, Duane Morris, Alston & Bird and Morrison Foerster add partners
-Duane Morris settles non-equity partner classification suit; Education Department nears end of the ABA accreditation monopoly
-Blackstone shelves a $3bn fund-stake sale; Cox Capital bids for discounted Blackstone Private Credit Fund and HPS shares
-Deal-by-deal SPVs displace blind-pool funds as PE payouts hit 16-year lows
-Oracle invokes force majeure on an OpenAI data center as AI-buildout financing risk mounts
-European bank consolidation heats up; Gen Digital bids for GoDaddy; Barry Diller drops MGM Resorts
-Paramount lines up $7.5bn in loans for its $110bn Warner Bros. Discovery deal
-US 10-year tops 5%; Trump and Xi extend their trade truce; US and Iran explore a Hormuz deal
Talent Strategy
Latest Moves
Weil Gotshal & Manges is bringing back Debra M. Sinclair as a partner in its US restructuring practice in New York.
O'Melveny hired Penelope Jensen from Linklaters for its bankruptcy and restructuring practice in New York.
Holland & Knight hired John Meadows from Steptoe for its Texas litigation group, focused on energy litigation, in Houston.
Duane Morris added corporate tax partner Alan J. Schwartz in New York.
Alston & Bird hired litigators Devin Donohue in Century City and Andy Hutchison in San Francisco for its litigation and trial group.
Husch Blackwell added commercial litigation partner Ryan Bueche in Austin, and Morrison Foerster hired Kaitlin Bagby for its emerging companies and venture capital group in Palo Alto.
What today's moves tell us: restructuring and litigation talent is in demand as distress and disputes build, with firms staffing bankruptcy, energy-litigation and trial benches while the top of the market keeps its deep bench in place.
Operations and Strategy
Partnership economics and a federal fight over the ABA's accreditation power are reshaping how firms grow and pay.
Duane Morris settled a suit alleging it misclassified some lawyers as partners to shift partnership expenses onto them. As firms lean on non-equity tiers to protect profitability, those tiers carry real employment and tax exposure.
The Education Department will decide within 90 days whether to end the ABA's role as the sole accreditor of US law schools after a federal advisory panel deadlocked. Texas and Florida have already loosened their reliance on ABA approval; a revocation would force schools, students and state bars to rethink oversight.
Client-side economics matter too. Bloomberg reports about $17bn of unrealized carry now sits with Blackstone, KKR and Carlyle rainmakers as payouts hit 16-year lows, cooling the appeal of private-equity careers. Separately, Tom Goodhead is following co-founder Harris Pogust in seeking to strip his name from claimant firm Pogust Goodhead.
Practices
Private Capital and Credit
Private credit's strain is spreading from funding to liquidity. Managers, sponsors and their lenders are leaning on counsel to engineer new structures and manage exits, sending high-end matters to funds, structured-credit, secondaries and workout teams. Complexity here is where sophisticated fund and finance practices tend to gain.
Selected Press:
Blackstone shelved a $3bn collateralized fund obligation after buyers balked at roughly 700 aging PE stakes, some older than two decades; Evercore still expects such volume to double past $30bn this year.
Cox Capital launched tender offers for Blackstone Private Credit Fund shares at a 12.5% discount and HPS Corporate Lending Fund shares at 17.5%, as both cap redemptions at 5%.
Deal-by-deal SPVs are displacing blind-pool funds, with A&O Shearman's Emma Danforth citing slow large-fund fundraising and PE payouts at 16-year lows.
Apollo's Marc Rowan warned the insurance industry risks a loss of trust from the federal probe into Mark Walter's Delaware Life; Moody's flagged refinancing risk on AI-exposed payment-in-kind loans.
M&A and Deals
Consolidation is broad, from European banking to software and insurance, and contested and cross-border deals are keeping deal, antitrust and governance lawyers busy for the dealmaking elite.
Selected Press:
European bank consolidation is accelerating: Commerzbank is weighing a purchase of UniCredit's German HVB unit, while Credit Agricole and UniCredit consider a joint, breakup-driven move on Banco BPM.
Gen Digital offered to buy $13bn GoDaddy, and Hellman & Friedman is exploring a $10bn sale of insurance-software maker Applied Systems.
Barry Diller's People Inc. dropped its take-private of MGM Resorts after failing to line up equity; MGM stays public and is weighing its own bid for People.
CVC and NSSK are weighing a $3.2bn take-private of Japan's Kobayashi Pharmaceutical; Starboard built a stake in Knife River to push a sale, and PG&E may separate assets as a California wildfire-liability deal stalls.
Capital Markets and Financing
Financing desks are funding megadeals and testing listing windows against 5% yields, work that flows to acquisition-finance, high-yield and capital-markets teams.
Selected Press:
Banks led by Citigroup are marketing $7.5bn of term loans to fund Paramount's $110bn takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery.
SoftBank raised $11.1bn in its largest junk-bond sale to fund its OpenAI investment, and 12 banks are selling $4.8bn of junk debt for KKR and ECP's $7.5bn take-private of DCC Energy.
The National Stock Exchange of India raised $2.4bn at a $47bn valuation, and Blackstone debuted a multi-asset private-markets fund for non-US retail investors.
AI Infrastructure and Regulatory Risk
The AI buildout is generating financing strain and enforcement at once, sending work to project-finance, energy, insurance, privacy and investigations teams as executives and boards weigh execution and liability risk.
Selected Press:
Oracle invoked force majeure on a New Mexico data center it will lease for OpenAI, citing delays after the state denied a gas-pipeline permit; Oracle and Blue Owl shares fell more than 5%.
A Semafor-cited report put the US AI buildout at 3.6% of GDP through 2032, more than $10tn, warning that layered financing leaves backers and insurers exposed to outsized losses.
New York's attorney general sued prediction-market operator Polymarket for alleged illegal gambling, and OpenAI and Microsoft moved to strike a Susman Godfrey-funded report from the AI-copyright litigation.
Where the Work Sits
***
Recent credit scares have tended to begin as funding and redemption problems rather than credit-quality blowups, and today's mix, Blackstone's shelved fund-stake sale, Cox Capital's discounted BDC bids, and deal-by-deal SPVs replacing blind pools, fits that pattern, routing high-end matters to funds, structured-credit, secondaries and workout teams first.
Oracle's force-majeure notice and the financing-risk warnings point to more project-finance, energy-regulatory, insurance-coverage and real-estate mandates, with restructuring counsel on standby if leases and loans sour.
Consolidation is broad and deep. European bank tie-ups, the Gen Digital-GoDaddy and Applied Systems processes, and contested situations like MGM and Knife River drive M&A, antitrust and corporate-governance work, while Paramount's $7.5bn financing and the DCC Energy take-private feed acquisition-finance and high-yield desks.
The Polymarket suit, the copyright fight over Susman Godfrey's report, an OpenAI agent's breach of an Australian government system, and Flock Safety's surveillance backlash feed privacy, litigation, professional-responsibility and investigations mandates.
Global Markets
Rates broke higher again and the geopolitical backdrop is shifting; treasurers and boards are repricing financing plans. Executives and treasurers are weighing whether to pull financing forward as the US 10-year pushed past 5% and global debt topped $365tn, and dealmakers are watching the Trump-Xi truce and a possible US-Iran Hormuz deal for signals on trade, sanctions and energy exposure. The market has priced rate rises before; when refinancing costs climb this fast, issuance and liability management tend to get pulled forward.
Selected Press:
The US 10-year yield reached about 5.2% and the 7-year sold at 5.085%, the highest since 1993, as markets priced a 53% chance of another Fed hike; the dollar hit a two-month high.
Global debt rose $10tn in the first half to top $365tn, with advanced economies paying over $3.3tn in interest last year.
Trump and Xi extended their trade truce through January and revived panda diplomacy, though gaps on AI and Taiwan remain.
US and Iranian negotiators are exploring a phased deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz; diesel topped $6.50 a gallon as a US export ban is weighed, and Schnabel's early ECB exit opened the Lagarde succession race.
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.
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