Good afternoon,
California became the first state to put hard rules around how lawyers and arbitrators use AI, while Gibson Dunn and Crowell & Moring kept the lateral market moving. Trump Media leaned on DLA Piper as the firm deepens its work for the president, and Quinn Emanuel is coming off a seven-win week capped by a $5.7bn Apple patent verdict.
On the client side, the Treasury sell-off turned reflexive: the 10-year cleared 5.3%, its highest since 2007, as forced selling fed on itself and UK 30-year yields touched 6%. A judge cleared Paramount Skydance’s $110bn Warner Bros. Discovery deal even as its financing bill climbed, the FTC widened a probe of Anthropic and OpenAI, and Trump teed up $200bn of Korean energy investment.
Now, on to what matters for your practice today.
Today’s Talking Points
-California enacts a first-of-its-kind lawyer and arbitrator AI law (SB 574); Arizona and Florida courts move to police AI in filings
-Gibson Dunn takes a McKool Smith patent duo in Dallas; Crowell & Moring adds an eDiscovery chair in Denver
-DLA Piper expands its Trump work in the Truth Social case; Texas AG probes the ABA’s law-school accreditation
-FTC widens its investigation of Anthropic and OpenAI; OpenAI accuses Moonshot of model distillation; Google fights an EU opening-up order
-A judge clears Paramount’s $110bn WBD deal as the $52bn debt package gets pricier; Tesla lines up $30bn in credit
-The Weston family nears a $9bn Boots buy from Sycamore; Platinum Equity takes 50% of Nestle’s water unit; Toho eyes KKR’s PHC
-The 10-year Treasury tops 5.3% and the UK 30-year hits 6% as a ‘vicious loop’ of forced selling builds; core PCE cools to 3%
-SocGen, SMBC and MUFG pull back from data-center loans; Micron revenue quintuples to $54.2bn
Talent Strategy
Latest Moves
Gibson Dunn hired patent trial partners Nicholas Mathews and Erik Fountain from McKool Smith into its intellectual property group in Dallas.
Crowell & Moring hired Lauren Schwartzreich as a partner in its litigation and trial group and head of its eDiscovery and information management practice in Denver.
What today's moves tell us: firms are still paying up for patent-trial firepower and e-discovery leadership as disputes and data volumes grow.
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
Regulation, reputation and AI are reshaping how firms consider selling and governing their work.
California Governor Gavin Newsom signed SB 574, the first state law governing how lawyers and arbitrators use generative AI. It bars them from delegating the practice of law to AI or feeding confidential or personal information into AI tools, requires lawyers to verify citations and sign each filing in their own name, and lets courts sanction arbitrators who delegate decisions to AI.
Courts are testing the same line: an Arizona appeals court ordered a new sentencing after a judge relied on an AI-generated victim video, and a Florida lawyer is fighting sanctions over filings a court said bore the hallmarks of AI.
Quinn Emanuel booked a seven-win week, including the record $5.7bn Apple patent verdict, even as judges recently pulled it off two matters on conflicts.
Practices
Corporate M&A and Private Equity
Dealmakers kept moving on consumer, pharma, energy and industrial assets, and a cleared mega-merger showed regulators will let big deals through on remedies rather than block them. This is a buyer’s market where sponsors and strategics with conviction press ahead, pointing to sell-side, financing and merger-control mandates for the dealmaking elite.
Selected Press:
A US judge approved a settlement clearing Paramount Skydance to close its $110bn Warner Bros. Discovery acquisition, ending a months-long antitrust holdup over film and TV competition.
The Weston family is near a roughly $9bn deal, including debt, to buy UK pharmacy chain Boots from Walgreens owner Sycamore Partners.
Platinum Equity agreed to buy 50% of Nestle’s water business for $2.9bn, backed by a $3.2bn financing led by Bank of America and Deutsche Bank with a rare ‘omniblocker’ concession.
Toho Holdings is in talks to buy KKR-backed device maker PHC Holdings for $1.3bn, a 20% premium, as Lundbeck flagged interest in Xeris Biopharma (about $1.8bn).
Gold Fields is weighing a sweetened cash bid for Northern Star to create the world’s second-largest gold producer, while BASF pursues Evonik as RAG Foundation considers selling its 43% stake.
Capital Markets, Credit and Restructuring
Issuers keep pushing financings even as the 10-year clears 5.3%, but higher-for-longer rates are widening the gap between the strongest borrowers and the rest and keeping acquisition-finance, workout and creditor-rights desks busy. Recent credit scares have tended to start as funding and liquidity problems before they become credit-quality ones, and this week’s mix of a pricier Paramount package and fresh Chapter 11 filings fits that mold for lenders and their counsel.
Selected Press:
Paramount Skydance is set to sell about $44bn of bonds in a $52bn package for the WBD deal, and bankers warn the long marketing delay has only raised its cost.
Tesla lined up $30bn of new loans and credit lines to fund AI and robotics, and the SEC proposed performance fees to push retail money into private markets.
Hertz hired PJT Partners to extend $2.7bn of maturities due in 2028, and pool supplier Leslie’s filed Chapter 11 to cut 90% of its debt and hand control to creditors including Cerberus and Axar.
Banks postponed an amend-and-extend on CD&R-backed White Cap’s $4.13bn loan, and Nuveen dumped $190m of bankrupt Brightline debt at 45 cents.
Micron revenue nearly quintupled to $54.2bn with $33bn of free cash flow, and all three big memory makers invested in Anthropic’s latest round, effectively financing their own demand.
AI, Regulation and IP
Regulators and courts are drawing harder lines around AI just as the labs race to list, turning AI oversight into a standing workstream for boards and general counsel.
Selected Press:
The FTC widened its investigation of Anthropic, OpenAI and other AI firms after hacking incidents, seeking testimony and examining safety group METR; lawyers say breaches of the White House AI accord could support a deceptive-practices case.
OpenAI said it disrupted a ‘coordinated model-distillation campaign’ it tied to China’s Moonshot AI, framing extracted model reasoning as a safety and national-security risk.
Google asked an EU court to suspend an order forcing it to open its AI chatbots and search to rivals.
Litigation and Enforcement
Boards and general counsel face a widening enforcement map from Washington and the states, with product-liability, white-collar and employment exposure all in motion.
Selected Press:
ExxonMobil and Suncor Energy take their bid to kill Boulder, Colorado’s climate-liability suit to the Supreme Court next week, with about 60 state and local suits riding on the outcome.
A New Mexico jury found Meta misled consumers over Cambridge Analytica, and a judge weighs penalties as AG Raul Torrez racks up solo wins.
The EEOC sued Harvard for records in an anti-white-bias hiring probe, and the DOJ filed a misconduct complaint against Minnesota federal judges over media interviews.
Where the Work Sits
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Trump’s $200bn Korean energy package, covering an Alaska LNG project, a Texas gas plant and eight nuclear reactors, and the retreat by SocGen, SMBC and MUFG from data-center loans point to more project-finance, energy-regulatory and structured-finance work, with the strongest sponsors crowding out the rest.
The 10-year above 5.3%, Hertz’s maturity extension, Leslie’s Chapter 11 and the stalled White Cap financing pull refinancing, liability-management and creditor-rights timelines forward, while Paramount’s rising debt bill keeps acquisition-finance and capital-markets teams busy.
Paramount’s cleared merger, the Boots and Nestle water sales, and the Gold Fields and BASF approaches drive cross-border M&A, antitrust and financing work, and remedy-driven clearances show boards that big deals can still get done.
California’s lawyer-AI law, the FTC’s widened probe, the OpenAI-Moonshot distillation fight and Google’s EU appeal point to more AI-governance, privacy, trade-secret and antitrust work for boards and their counsel.
Global Markets
A reflexive bond sell-off set the tone, even as US consumers kept spending. Dealmakers and treasurers continue watching and weighing whether to pull financing forward as the 10-year Treasury tops 5.3% and UK 30-year yields hit 6%, with forced selling by leveraged funds and mortgage holders feeding a ‘vicious loop.’
In past cycles, energy-driven inflation and a central bank reluctant to look through it have pulled refinancing and restructuring work forward, and decision-makers are now reading a resilient US consumer against France’s budget test and a Fed that Trump is openly pressuring.
Selected Press:
The 10-year Treasury topped 5.3%, its highest since 2007, and UK 30-year yields hit 6% for the first time since the late 1990s as global government bonds logged their worst quarter since 2024.
Core PCE cooled to 3.0% and consumer spending rose 0.6% in real terms, but the saving rate fell to a four-year low of 4.1%.
China’s factory activity returned to growth, with a 50.1 PMI on targeted stimulus, while France lays out a high-stakes budget today.
Trump said Jerome Powell should be forced off the Fed board as mortgage rates hit 7.30%, a near three-year high.
Stories to Watch
France’s 2027 budget (today) - a high-stakes test of investor nerves with UK 30-year yields at 6%.
ISM Manufacturing PMI (today) and the September jobs report (Friday) - labor and growth reads that steer the Fed and deal appetite.
Supreme Court argument in ExxonMobil and Suncor’s Boulder climate case (next week) - a ruling could sweep away about 60 state and local climate suits.
Meta penalty hearing in Santa Fe (today) - sizing the bill after a jury found it misled consumers over Cambridge Analytica.
Nike, Accenture and McCormick earnings (today and Friday) - reads on consumer and corporate spending.
Fed politics - Trump’s call for Powell to leave the board adds central-bank noise heading into the midterms.
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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