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Weil Gotshal & Manges' wind-down has become a redistribution event. Gibson Dunn is taking more than 80 of the firm's US private funds lawyers, about 120 globally once last week's London haul is counted; litigator Adam Fee is off to Quinn Emanuel and real estate chief Thomas Henry to Goodwin Procter, while Kirkland & Ellis closes in on Ramona Nee and a roughly 20-lawyer team. About ten former partners have hired counsel to recover their capital.
On the client side, Democrats swept both chambers of Congress, putting the firms that cut deals with President Trump (Kirkland and Skadden among them) back under scrutiny. Markets steadied on a chip rebound, with the ten-year near 4.95% and oil around $97.
Now, on to what matters for your practice today.
Today’s Talking Points
-Weil’s breakup accelerates — Gibson Dunn takes 80+ US funds lawyers, Fee to Quinn Emanuel, Henry to Goodwin, ex-partners lawyer up over capital
-Democrats sweep Congress — new Hill scrutiny for Kirkland, Skadden and the $940M Trump-deal firms
-Laterals roll on — Sidley, Morgan Lewis, Orrick, Barnes & Thornburg add partners; Squire Patton Boggs sheds a fourth in Australia
-Boies Schiller loses class-counsel spot in the Meta AI case; White & Case to defend McDonald’s AI-pricing suit; 3M pays $7.35B on PFAS
-CVS to split in two; CVR Energy buys Marathon refineries for $4.2B; Cinven takes Theramex at EUR 2.6B
-AI’s bill comes due — Meta prints $15B, Oracle leads a 17-firm bond rush, investors scramble for downside insurance
-Democratic sweep clouds the data-center buildout; chip rebound steadies stocks, 10-year near 4.95%, oil ~$97
-Watch: ISM services today, Friday payrolls, the BoE decision, and the ABA’s challenge to Trump’s firm orders
Talent Strategy
Latest Moves
Gibson Dunn is hiring more than 80 US private funds lawyers from Weil Gotshal & Manges, roughly 12 of them partners, across New York and Washington; with the 40-lawyer London funds team it agreed to take a week earlier, its total Weil intake reaches about 120 lawyers and more than 20 partners.
Litigator Adam Fee is leaving Weil for Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan; he joined Weil in 2025 from Paul Hastings and defended former Senator Bob Menendez.
Weil’s top real estate partner, Thomas Henry, is moving to Goodwin Procter; he joined Weil in 2024 from Willkie Farr.
Kirkland & Ellis is close to hiring Weil co-managing partner Ramona Nee along with about 20 colleagues, one of the firm’s strongest remaining groups.
Squire Patton Boggs lost corporate partner Blair Strickland and his team in Australia, its fourth partner departure there in two weeks.
Sidley Austin added real estate partner Jonathan Gaynor from Dechert in New York.
Orrick took Kirkland debt finance partner William Nicholson into its New York energy and infrastructure group.
Morgan Lewis welcomed FDA and healthcare partner Jacob Harper back in Washington.
Barnes & Thornburg added product liability partners Brett Clements in Washington and Nora Wolf in New York.
What today’s moves tell us: a dissolving Weil is now the single biggest supplier of lateral talent in the market, and rivals are lifting whole practice groups rather than picking off individuals.
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
A collapsing Weil and a new Democratic Congress are both reshaping the competitive map at the top of the market.
Weil would be the first top-25 firm by revenue since Dewey & LeBoeuf’s 2012 collapse to wind down without a merger, carrying roughly $2 billion in revenue and nearly $5.6 million in profits per equity partner across about 1,200 lawyers. About ten former partners have retained Foley & Lardner’s Peter Wang to recover capital that could run into the hundreds of millions, with repayment hinging on whether client collections clear the firm’s lease and vendor obligations; some are weighing a breach-of-fiduciary-duty claim against management. The firm has engaged AlixPartners, and a formal dissolution vote is still outstanding.
The sweep hands incoming House Judiciary chair Jamie Raskin new subpoena power over the nine firms that pledged $940 million in free legal work to the Trump administration, with Kirkland and Skadden already accused of stonewalling document requests. The reputational and governance questions now sit squarely with firm management. A new index, separately, shows US firms taking a growing share of high-value London work over the past decade.
Practices
Corporate M&A and Capital Markets
Dealmakers kept signing through the selloff, and the mix points to steady sell-side, acquisition-finance, and merger-review work: strategics are reshaping portfolios, sponsors are financing in size, and the AI buildout is driving record bond supply. Executives and board directors are treating open financing markets as a window to act rather than wait.
Selected Press:
CVS Health, valued near $115 billion, will split into two companies, separating its retail pharmacies from its insurance and pharmacy-benefit arm.
Icahn-controlled CVR Energy agreed to buy two refineries from Marathon Petroleum for $4.2 billion, with Trafigura taking $800 million of CVR stock to help fund it.
Cinven agreed to buy women’s-health specialist Theramex from Carlyle and PAI Partners for about EUR 2.6 billion, roughly double their 2022 price, backed by $1.7 billion of bank debt.
Marvell won Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s blessing for its roughly $103 billion Lumentum tie-up, a rare buy-side win for Qatalyst Partners, while NextEra offered Virginia more safeguards to clear its $67 billion Dominion acquisition.
Oracle raised about $20 billion, $9.9 billion of stock priced at an 11% discount plus $10 billion of bonds, leading a 17-firm high-grade rush, and Meta drew up to $58 billion of orders for a $15 billion bond sale to fund AI.
Private Equity, Credit, and Restructuring
Sponsors are managing a harder exit market and a jumpy credit tape at once, which keeps fund-formation, liability-management, and creditor-rights desks busy. Recent credit scares have tended to begin as funding and redemption problems rather than credit-quality problems, and the day’s cluster, investor pushback on continuation funds, pulled buyout loans, and a scramble for downside insurance, fits that pattern.
Selected Press:
Private-equity investors are resisting take-it-or-leave-it continuation funds, which topped $55 billion in the first half, as sponsors move prize assets into new vehicles they still control.
Banks pulled financings for Partners Group’s purchase of Aroma-Zone and for Asterion-backed Iqony amid the market turmoil, while Apollo flexed its balance sheet with a $9.6 billion ADT debt deal.
AI investors are racing to buy downside insurance as expensive financing, not capital availability, becomes the bottleneck for the data-center buildout.
StepStone raised $7.4 billion for its fifth private-equity secondaries fund as the secondaries market keeps growing.
Regulatory, Litigation, and Antitrust
Enforcement and disclosure are cutting several ways at once: courts are reining in the administration’s election push even as the DOJ presses on, large liability settlements are landing, and AI is spawning fresh antitrust and copyright fights, each a distinct mandate for general counsel and their outside firms.
Selected Press:
A federal judge stripped Boies Schiller Flexner of its interim class-counsel role in the authors’ copyright suit over Meta’s AI training.
White & Case will defend McDonald’s against proposed class actions alleging its AI pricing tools coordinate menu prices across US restaurants.
3M committed $7.35 billion over nine years to settle PFAS forever-chemicals personal-injury claims.
Senator Eric Schmitt and attorneys general from 14 states urged the Supreme Court to review the appeals-court ruling in the YPF case against Argentina.
The DOJ’s pre-election court losses, and a criminal probe that now names Democratic lawyer Marc Elias, set up a discovery hearing today in the ABA’s challenge to Trump’s law-firm executive orders.
Where the Work Sits
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The unwinding of a $2 billion firm without a bankruptcy filing is itself a mandate for other firms. Partner-capital recovery, client-transition and conflicts work, and a possible fiduciary-duty fight will run for years; Stroock’s 2023 wind-down and Dewey & LeBoeuf’s 2012 collapse both spun off exactly that kind of work long after the partners left. The firms absorbing Weil’s groups, led by Gibson Dunn, now carry their own integration, conflicts, and retention load.
Record bond supply from Meta and Oracle, pulled buyout loans, and the rush for downside insurance point to liability-management, creditor-rights, and project- and energy-finance mandates well before they point to defaults. The grid-component sales behind Triton’s roughly EUR 12 billion year of exits are the same trade from the other side: everyone is positioning around the power the buildout needs.
A Democratic Congress resets the risk map. More congressional investigations and subpoenas, renewed antitrust and platform scrutiny, and tighter oversight of crypto and prediction markets feed white-collar, investigations, regulatory-defense, and compliance desks, and put the Trump-deal firms’ own governance under a lens.
The deal slate keeps M&A, antitrust, and acquisition-finance teams busy: CVS’s split, CVR-Marathon, Cinven-Theramex, Marvell-Lumentum, and NextEra-Dominion all turn on regulatory execution, with energy and data-center infrastructure the throughline running under most of them.
Global Markets
A Democratic sweep, a steadier bond market, and cooler oil are leaving clients with a mixed read.
Executives and board directors are weighing whether a divided government slows AI and data-center policy and revives antitrust and crypto scrutiny, while treasurers watch a ten-year near 4.95% and Friday’s payrolls for the Fed’s next move. Dealmakers are positioning for more regulatory friction in Washington even as financing stays open.
Selected Press:
Democrats took both the House and Senate, winning in Republican strongholds including Texas and clouding the outlook for data centers and for Elon Musk’s ventures.
A chip rebound lifted the S&P 500 and Nasdaq, though Goldman’s desk flags 60% of the index in bear-market territory; the ten-year held near 4.96% after job openings hit a four-month high.
US manufacturing posted its strongest growth in five years, complicating the case for near-term Fed cuts.
The US and Iran are weighing mediator proposals, with Qatar expecting answers within two days; oil held near $97.
Stories to Watch
ISM Services PMI (today) — the dominant read on US services demand, after factory activity hit a five-year high.
October Nonfarm Payrolls (Friday) — the marquee labor print; weakness would revive the rate-cut bets cheaper financing depends on.
Bank of England rate decision (this week) — a first hike since 2023 would tighten conditions for UK deal and refinancing work.
ABA v. Trump executive-order case — a discovery hearing today before Judge Amir Ali tests the challenge to orders targeting law firms.
Earnings from Qualcomm, Uber, McDonald’s and CVS (today) and Airbnb (Thursday) — reads on AI demand, consumer spend, and the pricing-litigation backdrop.
US-Iran mediator proposals — Qatar expects responses within two days; an outcome would move oil and energy-sector risk.
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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