Paul Weiss Hiring Binge Shows Big Law’s Dealmaker Recruiting War

Paul Weiss is on a deals lawyer hiring tear as the price tag soars for top partners at elite firms.

The firm has poached more than 20 mergers and acquisitions and private equity partners in the last year. The hires—mostly in London and New York—come from leading UK firms and US rivals, including Kirkland & Ellis and Latham & Watkins. Elite firms pay some top partners $20 million or more per year.

“The amount firms are willing to pay talent has ratcheted up,” said Mary K. Young, a legal strategy consultant at the Zeughauser Group. “The talent they’re paying for are able to generate a tremendous amount of work or, in some cases, are necessary to do a deal.”

Paul Weiss and other top US firms have been forced to rethink longstanding pay models in response to the exponential growth of Kirkland, the behemoth whose annual revenue has nearly doubled to more than $7.2 billion in the last five years. Kirkland—with its revenue now at least twice that of most of its peers—has used its scale to disrupt the industry and many of its norms.

Paul Weiss overhauled its partner pay system to free up the cash needed to make its expensive hires. The firm also moved to a “black box” system in which lawyers no longer know how much their colleagues are making, according to a source familiar with the decision.

Paul Weiss in the last year also joined the growing wave of firms installing a new tier of non-equity partners to boost profits. The move allows firms to keep more senior attorneys without having to give them a share of profits.

Other Big Law firms in recent months have followed that playbook. Simpson Thacher & Bartlett widened the spread between its highest and lowest-paid equity partners. Davis Polk & Wardwell similarly adjusted its pay system to compete in the lateral partner market, which has historically been atypical for the firm.

“We’re operating in a ferociously competitive business where we need to provide our clients grappling with the most challenging, complex and existentially consequential matters with the very best talent to help solve their problems and achieve their business goals,” Paul Weiss Chairman Brad Karp said in an interview. “At the end of the day, there is no substitute for talent.”

The firms see the moves as necessary to attract and retain high-performing partners, Young said. That’s especially true at the top of partnerships, where the number of lawyers who can land complex and lucrative deals narrows.

Hiring Spree

The 150-year-old Paul Weiss has long been among the country’s most profitable firms, known for its work on white-collar defense and corporate litigation. It’s also a major player in M&A and private equity, thanks to a close relationship with Apollo Global Management and the 2016 addition of Wall Street rainmaker Scott Barshay.

Its hiring spree kicked into high gear in August 2023, shortly after Kirkland poached Alvaro Membrillera from the firm’s London office. The departure—Membrillera was the top Paul Weiss UK lawyer—soon left the firm down to two partners in London.

Paul Weiss quickly struck back, luring London rainmaker Neel Sachdev away from Kirkland to help lead the firm’s rebuilding office. Kirkland dealmaker Roger Johnson soon followed, joining as co-head of Paul Weiss’ global corporate practice and London co-head, together forming a London private equity, M&A and financing boutique for Paul Weiss.

UK debt finance partner Stefan Arnold-Soulby and IP and technology transactions partner John Patten also joined from Kirkland, among others.

The hires allowed the the firm to build a full-service London practice, which Karp said had previously proved challenging.

“For several years, we attempted to scale our London office and develop UK law capability to meet the increasing global needs of our large public company and PE clients, but were unable to find partners with the requisite talent who were also cultural fits,” said Karp. “Last year, we were presented with a unique opportunity, which we seized.”

The firm lagged behind Big Law’s top deals advisers last year, during a slow stretch for transactions. Kirkland & Ellis topped the charts, working on nearly $343 billion worth of M&A deals. It was followed by Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz with $294.8 billion and Latham & Watkins with $257.7 billion, according to Bloomberg Law’s January league table rankings. Paul Weiss ranked fifth on the list.

The firm occupies the same spot among Big Law’s most profitable. Its profits per equity partner last year neared $6.6 million, which was fifth among US law firms.

“You can’t miss what they’ve done—they’ve brought in a lot of really talented, highly regarded lawyers,” said New York recruiter Jon Truster, a partner at search firm Macrae. “Even if they’re not getting market share right now, when things turn, they’re going to be very well positioned to get that work.”

The firm also tapped Kirkland for more private equity firepower during the recent hiring stretch. It brought on New York lawyer Eric Wedel along with a three-partner team from Kirkland, where Wedel was a partner for more than a decade. He advised Stone Point on the Truist Insurance buy, among other deals, since joining the firm.

Big Deals Profile

The firm’s dealmaking continues to revolve in large part around Apollo, a major client whose relationship with the firm was crafted by Karp.

Paul Weiss last year advised the private equity giant on nearly $30 billion in deals, including take-privates. Its lawyers this year guided Apollo’s $11 billion purchase of a stake in Intel’s new manufacturing facility in Ireland, among other transactions.

Barshay has boosted Paul Weiss’ deals profile since his move from Cravath, Swaine & Moore in 2016, a rare departure from the vaunted Wall Street firm that caught the attention of the deals world.

Barshay’s clients include IBM, who he has advised in acquisitions and dispositions adding up to more than $75 billion in value, according to the firm. He’s also represented Chevron, General Electric and Anheuser‑Busch InBev in some of the largest deals of the decade.

Some of the draw to move onto the corporate team at Paul Weiss comes from lawyers’ desire to work with Barshay, said Truster, the Macrae recruiter.

“Even when Scott was a young partner at Cravath, if someone had done a rotation with him, you knew they were top quality and that was someone the firm had taken a real interest in,” Truster said.

But that was not enough to convince some Texas dealmakers to leave their firms to help Paul Weiss launch a Houston office. The effort stalled after local lawyers turned down guarantees of $10 million to $15 million for multiple years.

For those partners that have joined the firm in the last year, deals work is not the only metric of success. The firm’s changes to its longstanding pay system and influx of new partners can also stress its culture.

“In making these moves, you really have to care about what kinds of partners these people will be, because they become the firm,” said Ralph Baxter, a consultant who was previously chief executive at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe. “You have to be really careful about the cultural dimensions of the people you add.”

It remains to be seen whether all of the expensive hiring pays off in additional business, said Katherine Loanzon, a managing director at search firm Kinney Recruiting.

“We’ll see in the next year or two years whether growth, the integration and hiring of new partners was the right move,” she said.