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US law firm Paul Weiss has launched a second raid on Kirkland & Ellis LLP, poaching at least a dozen private equity finance lawyers from its rival’s London office less than a month after it poached them. Three partners.
The law firm, whose clients include Wall Street giant Apollo Global Management, has also hired a London M&A partner from Linklaters as an escalation continues among the industry’s biggest names part of a battle for top lawyers.
Law firms have been major beneficiaries of the private equity deal boom of the past decade, with senior partners now able to command salaries from rival investment bankers.
New hires at Paul Weiss include Linklaters trading specialist Will Aitken-Davies, who has worked for clients including Asda owner TDR Capital; Roger Johnson, a former Kirkland attorney and adviser to private equity firm EQT.
Three other Kirkland lawyers have also joined the firm as partners – tax experts Timothy Lowe and Cian O’Connor and mergers and acquisitions adviser Andreas Philipson. Another Kirkland attorney who focuses on taxes is also discussing relocation.
In less than a month, Paul Weiss plans to increase the number of lawyers in its London office by more than a third to more than 40 lawyers and will form a team to provide services in M&A, debt finance, capital markets, and tax and Providing legal advice on litigation. Private equity firms and their executives.
In August, Paul Weiss hired a group of debt financing lawyers, including Neel Sachdev in Kirkland’s London office, as well as a group of U.S. lawyers led by Kirkland partner Eric Wedel.
Sachdev has been with Kirkland for more than 20 years and played a key role in building its European operations. Kirkland’s partners earned an industry-leading $7.5 million each last year, and the poaching marks Paul Weiss’ expansion plans in London’s legal market.
Unlike some U.S. rivals such as Kirkland and Latham & Watkins, Paul Weiss has largely missed out on the booming European market over the past decade or so. Most recently, the company’s London head, Alvaro Membrillera, was also replaced by Kirkland.
Kirkland, in particular, gained market share by hiring star dealmakers at high salaries from other firms.
Paul Weiss’s decision to invest heavily in London comes as a takeover spree that has racked up billions in fees for lawyers advising deals and debt financing packages to fund them comes to an end.
Higher interest rates make it more difficult to close deals, and investors have become more selective about which companies they give money to. Law firms are well-positioned to weather downturns because they can also earn fees by advising on corporate restructurings, refinancings and bankruptcies.
Paul Weiss is best known for his close ties to Apollo and his relationships with leading U.S. Democratic politicians. In the U.S., the company also recently hired Robert Kindler, M&A chairman at Morgan Stanley, and energy and infrastructure lawyer Ravi Purohit from Latham & Watkins (Ravi Purohit).
Kirkland and Paul Weiss declined to comment. Linklaters did not respond to a request for comment.
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