- Sep 9, 2024
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Thank you again for the kind words Chris😄!! For the question about Paul, Weiss' position in the City, I would describe it as a middle-to-large office with a full service offering tailored for PE clients and a strategic focus on high end mandates. While its English law practice is very new, you can definitely argue this will not be an impediment for delivering the highest quality of legal services on the most complex matters. Firstly, Paul, Weiss has poached some of the most renowned practitioners in most of its practice areas - leaders in their fields such as Neel Sachdev in leveraged finance and Nicole Kar in antitrust. Secondly, Paul, Weiss' expansion was quite unique in that it poached many ready-made teams of partners and associates. Thus, many of its lawyers will know how to seamlessly work together from day one. Even for those that had not worked in the same teams before, integration is likely to have been a lot easier than normally would have been the case. The legal press reported that the majority had a background at either Kirkland or Linklaters, which means that they will have both been trained in the same style and will have likely known each other and had working relations.
For the second question, I would firstly comment that the more relevant competitors of Paul, Weiss' would be US and not UK firms. This is both because of Paul, Weiss' focus on PE, in which the US firms tend to dominate, and simply because the clients the firm is hoping to represent are US-based PE firms who need advice and services on deals/matters with English law elements. Among the US competitors, because on Paul, Weiss' high-end focus, those will mostly be the firms in the V10 and (to a somewhat lower extent) the V20. The Vault rankings are of course not an objective ranking of expertise, but I would argue they are a rough indicator to the "band" of prestige a US firms places into, especially in relation to high-end transactional matters. The lower down the list you go, the greater the likelihood that you won't often find that particular firm advising on the highest value mandates.
Now within the V20, different firms will have different practice area strengths. and will target different client bases. To identify the most important competitors, you want to identify the firms that Paul, Weiss' will most often find themselves pitching against when trying to win a mandate. Thus, the ones you want to pick are those whose core client base consists of PE clients. Since Skadden's central focus is on corporate M& and its core client base consists of multinational corporations, I would not name them among Paul, Weiss' greatest competitors. Normally I would have made a similar comment on Davis Polk, as its focus is on capital markets and the most important clients are investment banks like JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley. However, after its recent expansion in London I would say the firm is now getting closer to an equal split of M&A/PE practitioners and capital markets ones. More importantly, Davis Polk's London office has previously advised Apollo on a number of mandates, and Apollo is the one key client that Paul, Weiss has a very strong relationship to in the US; and which it now aims to also represent on as many London matters as possible.
Nonetheless, looking at both US rankings and UK practice area focus and client base, the firms I would consider to be Paul, Weiss' foremost competitors are: Kirkland, Latham, Simpson Thatcher, and Weil.
