Good afternoon,

Willkie Farr & Gallagher surpassed $2 billion in revenue in 2025 and is now targeting London and private capital to further supercharge its performance as it pushes its way toward the top tier of global firms. Lateral activity stays busy across M&A, fund formation, IP litigation, and life sciences, with Dechert, Norton Rose Fulbright, Willkie, Winston Taylor, and Ropes & Gray all adding partners. Pillsbury hired its first Chief AI Officer.

On the client side, four U.S. states are seeking $1.4 trillion in penalties from Meta in an August youth safety trial, while Amazon is raising at least $25 billion in bonds to fund its AI buildout but investor fatigue is starting to show as AI-linked corporate debt tops $335 billion this year. PE firms are sitting on a nine-year backlog of unsold portfolio companies, and Trump declared the Iran ceasefire over, sending oil prices up 6%.

Now, on to what matters for your practice today.

Today’s Talking Points

-Willkie Targets Top Tier, Surpasses $2Bn Revenue / Pillsbury Hires First Chief AI Officer

-Laterals at Dechert, NRF, Willkie, Winston Taylor, Ropes & Gray, Paul Hastings, King & Spalding

-Meta Faces $1.4 Trillion Penalties / Meta AI Glasses Raise Privacy Concerns

-Amazon $25B Bond Sale Meets Cooler Demand / AI Debt Tops $335B in 2026

-PE Firms Sitting on Nine-Year Portfolio Backlog / HSBC Pulls Back from Private Credit

-Norway Wealth Fund Takes $500M Stake in US Retail Real Estate

-Trump Declares Iran Ceasefire Over / Oil Jumps 6% / Fed Minutes This Week

Talent Strategy

Latest Moves

What today's moves tell us: Firms keep hiring across private capital, M&A, IP litigation, and life sciences reflecting client demand that cuts across practice lines. The pattern of Kirkland exits continues, and the newly merged Winston Taylor is both gaining and losing talent in the same week.

Operations and Strategy

Revenue milestones, AI investment, and IPO dominance are reshaping how firms compete for talent and client work.

Willkie Farr & Gallagher has more than doubled revenue since 2020, surpassing $2 billion in 2025. Its leadership is focused on building out London and private capital capabilities, with the firm making clear it intends to compete at the highest tier globally. The growth trajectory puts Willkie alongside firms that have historically dominated the sponsor-side market.

Pillsbury hired Oz Benamram as its first Chief AI Officer, tasked with building a team to expand the firm's use of AI. The hire comes as firms across the Am Law 200 race to embed AI into workflows, though a top Amazon lawyer noted at a London conference this week that adoption numbers look strong but the savings case remains unclear.

Latham & Watkins guided nearly $67 billion worth of IPOs in H1 2026 — more than double all of 2025 — extending its lead as the top firm for public offerings. Energy IPOs tied to AI data center power demand are driving much of the volume, with the firm's 2010 move to Houston now paying off as that market heats up.

Practices

Capital Markets and Private Credit

The wave of AI-linked corporate debt is testing investor appetite. Amazon's $25 billion bond sale drew peak demand of $62 billion but orders fell back to $41 billion well below the roughly 4x oversubscription that has been the norm for high-grade US issuers this year. The deal pushes total AI-related corporate debt in 2026 past $335 billion, more than double 2025. Wider spreads and higher concessions signal that capital markets teams and underwriters face tougher pricing conversations as the supply of tech debt keeps growing. HSBC meanwhile pulled back from riskier private credit lending, and PE firms are sitting on a nine-year backlog of unsold portfolio companies, with AI uncertainty making software valuations harder to pin down. Fund managers are under pressure to find creative exits as LPs grow impatient for distributions.

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Litigation and Consumer Protection

The youth safety litigation against Meta is entering its most consequential phase. Four states — California, Colorado, Kentucky, and New Jersey — are collectively seeking $1.4 trillion in penalties ahead of an August trial, alleging that Facebook and Instagram were designed to addict young users. The scale of the claim, calculated by multiplying estimated teen violations by statutory fines, creates a potential template for enforcement actions that could reshape platform liability risk across the tech sector. General counsel at social media and consumer tech companies are watching the trial as a bellwether for litigation exposure and regulatory strategy.

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Data Privacy, Cybersecurity, and Environmental

Meta's AI glasses program and data center operations are creating further legal risk for the social media giant on two fronts. The company's "super sensing" glasses project — designed to continuously capture audio and images without a visible recording indicator — raises direct compliance questions under wiretapping and biometric privacy laws. Separately, a Meta data center in Cheyenne, Wyoming contaminated the city's wastewater system with a multidrug-resistant bacterium through a contractor, prompting a halt in industrial wastewater acceptance and adding to local opposition against new data center facilities. Together, these developments widen the regulatory and litigation surface for companies building AI infrastructure.

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Where the Work Sits

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The $1.4 trillion Meta youth safety case and the broader wave of platform liability litigation are feeding consumer protection, regulatory defense, and mass tort practices. If the penalty framework holds, it sets a template that general counsel across social media and consumer tech will need to price into their risk models, generating advisory mandates on product design, compliance, and litigation strategy.

Amazon's $25 billion bond sale and the broader AI debt wave are creating high-end capital markets, leveraged finance, and structured finance work. As investor fatigue starts to show and spreads widen, underwriters and issuers will lean on counsel for tighter documentation, pricing negotiations, and risk allocation. The PE backlog is pushing fund managers toward creative exit structures — secondary sales, continuation vehicles, and partial realizations which generate fund formation and M&A mandates.

Meta's AI glasses and data center incidents open two distinct work streams: data privacy, biometric compliance, and wiretapping defense on the product side, and environmental, regulatory, and product liability work tied to infrastructure operations. Data center siting disputes and environmental contamination claims are a growing source of billable work for firms with local government and environmental practices.

Global Markets

Geopolitical risk is back at the top of the agenda. Clients are watching renewed US-Iran hostilities and a 6% jump in oil prices as they reassess deal timelines and financing assumptions. Current ($75 a barrel) oil price reflects the market’s belief that hostilities wont escalate. However, sophisticated clients will read an oil price jump to the $80-$90 range as an expectation to disruption of the supply chain and less favorable credit conditions. The dollar's strength and the end of the gold bull market are also shifting cross-border deal math, but it is the Fed meeting minutes due this week that will give dealmakers and fund managers a clearer read on the rate path.

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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.