Big Law Has a New M&A Top Dog—Can It Keep Kirkland at Bay?

Latham & Watkins took the perch as Big Law’s leading M&A dealmaker in the first half of the year, surging past rival Kirkland & Ellis as things started to look up for firms whose fortunes are closely tied to corporate transactions.

Many law firms were expecting a spike in M&A deals in the first quarter of this year, but that largely failed to materialize. Now, with 2025 half over, we’re starting to see a lot more activity on this front and firms are reaping the financial benefits.

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Global deal volume for the first half of the year is up nearly 20% compared to the same time last year, and that includes Meta Platforms’ $14 billion investment in Scale AI. In fact, deals involving AI, either directly or indirectly, have been driving a lot of the activity of the past few months, according to reporter Mahira Dayal, who crunched the numbers for Bloomberg Law’s quarterly league tables.

On this episode of our podcast, On The Merits, Mahira speaks to host Mike Leonard about this and other reasons why the deals market is rebounding after a slow start to the year why it’s probably a little too early to start betting against Kirkland.

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