Good afternoon,
Simpson Thacher planted a flag in Chicago, hiring five corporate partners from Kirkland & Ellis, the second office launch this year built on ex-Kirkland partners. The lateral market stayed busy underneath it, with a Treasury digital-assets official heading to Hogan Lovells and Holland & Knight opening in Huntsville.
On the client side, dealmakers kept signing: Apollo won easyJet for £5.7 billion, Nielsen agreed to buy DoubleVerify for $2.15 billion, and Dream Finders struck a $916 million deal for Beazer Homes. Asian companies raised a record $83 billion of equity in July.
The July jobs report surprised to the downside, with the US shedding 23,000 jobs, as gold posted its best week since January.
Now, on to what matters for your practice today.
Today’s Talking Points
-Simpson Thacher enters Chicago with five Kirkland partners; laterals land in DC, Alabama, and New York
-A mass-tort lawyer builds a PE-backed personal-injury AI as firms try to sell judgment, not just hours
-M&A stays live: Apollo–easyJet, Nielsen–DoubleVerify, Dream Finders–Beazer, AMD–Taalas, Kirin–Jamieson
-Record $83B Asia equity wave: SK Hynix, CXMT, Zhongji Innolight; Alphabet prices $25B of debt
-Ford's civil-RICO push against plaintiff firms puts Neal Katyal opposite his old firm
-US sheds 23K jobs; Bessent leans on a Fed backstop to defend the yen; gold up more than 6%
Talent Strategy
Latest Moves
Simpson Thacher & Bartlett opened a Chicago office with five corporate partners hired from Kirkland & Ellis, its second office this year built on ex-Kirkland partners.
Hogan Lovells added Tyler Williams, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's digital-assets counselor, as a senior adviser in its Washington government-relations and public-affairs practice.
Holland & Knight opened in Huntsville, Alabama, led by partner Ryan Letson with associate Andrew Tuggle, its second office in the state.
DLA Piper hired A&O Shearman's energy and infrastructure co-head; Linklaters built in New York with a Paul Weiss hire; and McDermott rehired a funds partner from Blackstone.
What today's moves tell us: underneath the scramble for senior talent, the base is thinning: the number of entry-level lawyers hired by the biggest US firms fell last year, per Reuters; a sign firms are concentrating spend on proven, revenue-ready talent.
Operations and Strategy
The nature of the competitive market is forcing firms to test new ways to fund growth and package expertise.
To some law firms, the pressure to find new profitable revenue is visible in the numbers: Stephenson Harwood posted an 11% average revenue rise over four years but a 12% year-on-year drop in profit, and framed the dip as a longer-term bet.
Firms are also trying to sell judgment as a product. A former University of Texas law professor is building a private-equity-backed AI to sell tools to personal-injury firms, aimed at speeding tariff, personal-injury, and mass-tort claims, a further attempt to get paid for expertise when AI compresses the hours.
Practices
Corporate M&A and Private Equity
Sponsors and strategics kept signing across airlines, homebuilding, ad-tech, and chips, a sign that appetite for take-privates and bolt-ons is holding even with a choppier tape. Dealmakers are moving on assets they have tracked for a while, which points to steady M&A, financing, diligence work, and contested processes are exactly where corporate clients lean on trusted outside counsel.
Selected Press:
Apollo Global Management agreed to buy easyJet for £5.7 billion after Castlelake withdrew a rival bid; Macfarlanes is advising the airline's founder.
Nielsen will buy ad-measurement firm DoubleVerify in a $2.15 billion take-private, pushing deeper into digital media.
Dream Finders Homes agreed to acquire Beazer Homes for $33.50 a share in cash, a roughly $916 million deal.
AMD will buy Canadian startup Taalas to add a new type of AI data-center chip; Kirin flagged more M&A after its C$2 billion ($1.4 billion) deal for Jamieson Wellness.
Slaughter and May and Freshfields are in line for more than £25 million in combined fees on Rotork's £4.1 billion sale to ABB.
Capital Markets
An open equity window will likely continues pulling issuers off the sidelines, especially in Asia. The scale of new listings and debt sales points to a busier calendar for capital-markets and financing teams, with sponsors and founders timing exits into demand.
Selected Press:
Asian companies raised a record $83 billion of equity in July, led by SK Hynix's $26.5 billion sale; chipmaker CXMT jumped 466% on debut and Zhongji Innolight raised nearly $7 billion in Hong Kong's biggest listing in seven years.
India boosted its LIC share sale to $3.3 billion on strong demand, and Alphabet drew heavy interest for a $25 billion debt sale at higher yields.
SpaceX rose 6% as a lockup expiration more than doubled its public float, lifting near-term volatility.
Litigation and Enforcement
Companies are turning litigation into a weapon against the plaintiffs' bar, and courts are drawing new lines on AI and platform liability. General counsel are recalculating exposure as regulators and adversaries test theories that reshape defense and disclosure mandates.
Selected Press:
Ford is pursuing a civil-RICO case against attorneys from Knight Law Group; Neal Katyal is defending the firm against a Hogan Lovells team — his former firm — in one of 20-plus RICO suits big companies have filed against plaintiff lawyers in two years.
A judge ordered Meta to pay into a New Mexico abatement fund over its platforms' role in youth mental-health harms; Meta plans to appeal.
Regulatory and Trade
Trade controls and chip policy keep generating cross-border advisory work. Clients are watching where new tariffs and export reviews land, because each shift resets supply-chain and compliance playbooks.
Selected Press:
President Trump imposed a 15% tariff and minimum prices on certain solar-panel materials, lifting US solar stocks on domestic-supply bets.
The US is reviewing China's offshore access to Nvidia chips after recent AI gains, widening export-controls exposure.
Where the Work Sits
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Transactional desks anchor the near-term pipeline. Apollo–easyJet, Nielsen–DoubleVerify, Dream Finders–Beazer, AMD–Taalas, and Kirin–Jamieson feed buy-side, sell-side, financing, and diligence teams, while the Rotork–ABB sale shows how a single cross-border carve-out can spin off eight-figure fee pools for the firms that hold the relationship.
Capital markets teams are also busy. A record Asia equity wave — SK Hynix, CXMT, and Zhongji Innolight — plus India's LIC sale and Alphabet's $25 billion bond deal keep ECM, high-yield, and cross-border listing teams engaged, with founders and sponsors timing exits into open demand. This is the constructive side of the playbook: stable, risk-on conditions give boards the confidence to raise and deploy.
Disputes are the counterweight. Ford's RICO campaign against the plaintiffs' bar, Meta's platform-liability payout, and courts policing AI in filings keep white-collar, product-liability, and securities-defense teams busy increasingly with AI systems at the center of the facts.
Trade and regulatory work rounds out the high-end matters. New solar tariffs and the review of China's Nvidia access widen sanctions and export-controls mandates, the kind of sophisticated cross-border advice that flows to a small set of firms whenever policy turns fluid.
Global Markets
A soft jobs print today and an activist Treasury force a repricing rate and create a currency risk in real time. Fund managers and treasurers are weighing whether a weaker labor market pulls the Fed toward cuts even as inflation keeps a hike on the table, a split that further complicates the timing on refinancings and cross-border deals. Clients are also watching Washington intervene more directly in currency markets, a signal that policy, not just data, will drive the next financing window.
Selected Press:
The US shed 23,000 jobs in July against expectations of an 83,000 gain; unemployment edged down to 4.1% as participation slid to a five-year low of 61.4%.
Treasury Secretary Bessent pressed Japan to tap a Federal Reserve backstop to defend the yen near four-decade lows and urged the Fed to enlarge it, after the Treasury moved to buy Argentine pesos; potential Fed chair Kevin Warsh said he would back a rate hike if inflation stays high.
Gold headed for its best week since January, up more than 6%, as China's trade surplus narrowed to $112.5 billion and oil bounced on Middle East tension.
Stories to Watch
Fed leadership — Warsh signals openness to a rate hike even as jobs soften; watch financing windows and the dollar.
Monday earnings — Sea Ltd, Simon Property Group, and Cardinal Health give reads on consumer, real estate, and healthcare demand.
China chip review — the US reassessment of offshore Nvidia access could open fresh export-controls work.
Middle East defense pact — a Saudi Arabia–Turkey–Pakistan agreement and firmer oil keep geopolitical risk on boards’ radar.
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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