Late bloomer: how Paul Weiss made up for lost time on the global stage

For years, while rivals like Kirkland & Ellis, Skadden and Latham & Watkins disrupted the London legal market, Paul Weiss had bucked the global trend, practising only US law from small offices outside of its domestic heartlands.

Its much-lauded English law launch last year marked a dramatic u-turn, with the firm following up with a new European office in Brussels earlier this year, as well as the launch of a fifth US office in Los Angeles on home ground.

It may still be a long way off truly global but there’s no denying the shift in Paul Weiss’s position. Its office count now stands at 11 worldwide, with its work focused around five core practices: private equity (PE); public M&A; litigation; white-collar regulatory defence; and restructuring.

Since August 2023 the firm has added more than 60 new partners, taking its total partnership to 250 and its lawyer count to more than 1,000.

Domestically, its recent hires include Joseph Glatt, former general counsel for Apollo’s credit arm, who joined as a corporate partner in New York; private equity M&A partner Bianca Levin-Soler, who joined from Ropes & Gray in Los Angeles; and fund finance partner Flora Go, who joined the New York office as head of fund finance from Fried Frank.

Meanwhile, in the UK, the firm most recently added financial regulatory specialist Revathi Raghavan as a partner from Kirkland.

‘We want to continue to attract the most consequential matters from the most important clients in the world in each of the areas in which we practice,’ says Paul Weiss chair Brad Karp of the firm’s expansion plans. ‘The depth of talent in our partnership has never been greater and, as a result, our firm’s market position has never been stronger.’

Cracking Europe

Paul Weiss’s commitment to expanding in the US has been dwarfed by its efforts on this side of the Atlantic in recent months, with the firm building up a sizeable presence at lightning speed. Since making headlines with its English law launch in November 2023 via the eye-catching hire of a Kirkland team led by debt finance star Neel Sachdev and PE partner Roger Johnson in summer 2023, the office has expanded to around 170 lawyers – nearly doubling in size in just over a year. Thirty two of these are partners.

For context, according to LB’s Global London rankings, this puts the firm already at the size of long-term London players like Squire Patton Boggs and Ropes & Gray.

‘London is one of the world’s great financial centres and a gateway to Europe,’ Karp tells LB as he discusses how the London office fits in with the firm’s global strategy, which has been driven in large part by the firm’s PE clients demanding a credible and effective London solution.

Sachdev adds: ‘The growth of our London office and English law practice enables us to offer elite teams to corporate and private equity clients in London and New York.’

According to Sachdev, on the transactional side the London office has already been involved in multiple major European deals, including advising funds managed by Apollo on its £2.7bn acquisition of UK delivery company Evri from Advent International, the largest UK logistics sector private equity buyout in the past five years. A London team is also advising KPS Capital Partners on its €3.5bn acquisition of Innomotics from Siemens.

The hires and the mandates have undoubtedly shaken up the market. ‘The London market will never be the same,’ comments one head at a rival US firm, somewhat dramatically. ‘Paul Weiss seems to be taking a page out of the playbook Kirkland used so successfully in the early 2000s when it captured amazing talent by offering eye-popping deals to move people,’ they add, alluding to the fact Sachdev, who joined Kirkland in 2003, played a large part in driving Kirkland’s phenomenal growth in London.

‘The depth of talent in our partnership has never been greater and, as a result, our firm’s market position has never been stronger.’
Brad Karp, Paul Weiss

After kickstarting its European competition practice with the hire of Nicole Kar from Linklaters, the firm has also made its first move into continental Europe by launching a competition-focused office in Brussels ,with the hires of antitrust partners Ross Ferguson from Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett and Richard Pepper from Macfarlanes. Karp explains that clients had ‘long asked’ for the firm to scale London as well as develop a competition practice based in Brussels.

‘Our goal is to be the leading competition law firm in the world. To achieve that, a firm needs preeminent practice in Brussels,’ he says.

While the firm is continuing to grow in London and now has ten lawyers in Brussels, there are no current plans to extend in Europe beyond this, with the focus only on the most profitable locations that fit in with key client strategies.

It’s a strategy that some rivals believe makes sense. As a US private equity head comments: ‘It’s perfectly viable for Paul Weiss to operate from London and Brussels. You don’t need a presence in every city anymore. For international M&A, banking, and private equity, having London and New York is essential and anywhere else in Europe tends to be a bonus.’

Domestic expansion

At the same time as attempting to crack London, Paul Weiss has also been expanding its presence in key domestic markets in the US, with high profile moves including New York-based Eric Wedel leaving Kirkland with a team to launch the LA office in August 2023. Wedel, who co-chairs the global finance and capital markets group alongside Sachdev, brought along finance partners Ben Steadman, Caroline Epstein, and Matthew Leist.

Karp says the new LA office, the firm’s second California location after San Francisco opened in 2021, will also enhance the breadth of its private equity and alternative investment practice. It currently has 20 lawyers, with recent mandates for Wedel and co including advising Hg Capital on the financing for its acquisition of AuditBoard, valued at over $3bn.

Given the scale of the firm’s expansion in recent months, the obvious question in the market is where next?

Paul Weiss has been linked to a potential launch in Houston, where multiple firms including Kirkland and Latham have been building offices in order to capture lucrative energy and private equity work.

‘It’s perfectly viable for Paul Weiss to operate from London and Brussels. You don’t need a presence in every city anymore.’
US private equity head

With multiple US firms rethinking their approach to Asia, where Paul Weiss currently has small US law offerings in Beijing, Tokyo and Hong Kong, the firm’s name has also been linked with a potential launch in Singapore. Should it open in Singapore it would be following in the recent footsteps of Quinn Emanuel, which launched there in July this year with a boutique arbitration practice.

Karp is reluctant to go into long-term specifics, saying only that the firm is ‘continuing to monitor Asia closely’. In the shorter term he confirms that there are: ‘no presents plans to open an office in Houston or Singapore (or any other location)’.

Whether Karp’s statement ends speculation about the firm’s plans is another matter, given the scale of the firm’s disruption in the US and London in recent months. The firm now sits at 27th place in the Global 100, with revenues of more than $2bn, even without fee income from its most recent launches.

As one head at a rival firm summarises: ‘Paul Weiss has traditionally concentrated on litigation in New York, taking pride in its status as a prominent New York firm. However, over the years, it realised that the legal market extends beyond New York. To increase its revenue, it began exploring opportunities in other major cities. London is a big move – it forms part of the firm’s view that it must consider a wider variety of locations and client needs.’

For more on Paul Weiss, see LB’s feature ‘Market forces: Paul Weiss, Kirkland and the war for London talent’, LB319.

elisha.juttla@legalease.co.uk