Business of Law Firms​

Paul Weiss raids K&E​


What do you need to know this week?

News broke on Monday that US firm Paul Weiss poached Kirkland & Ellis’s elite London debt finance team headed by Neel Sachdev. K&E lost four partners in total.

As The Lawyer observes, Sachdev was at K&E for 20 years, with Deirdre Jones, Kanesh Balasubramaniam, and Matthew Merkle and having been at the firm for three, five, and 10 years respectively.

Earlier this month, K&E poached Paul Weiss’s London managing partner Alvaro Membrillera, with Chicago-based rival Sidley Austin poaching a private equity and an M&A partner in June.

Why is this important for your interviews?

Law firms are businesses, and nearly all businesses operating in the same or similar industry have competitors. It is important to appreciate the dynamics governing the relationship between industry competitors, because this will demonstrate a strong degree of commercial awareness.

How is this topic relevant to law firms?

The talent war for senior partners in London shows no sign of abating, despite the muted deal volumes that has characterised 2023.

Among US firms like Sidley, K&E, and Paul Weiss, senior partner compensation can exceed $10m a year, which puts these rainmakers on par with the top-paid investment bankers.

Using profit-per-equity partner (PEP) as a metric, average partner profit at K&E exceeds $6m, whereas the elite UK firms average around $2m. This suggests that American firms have an inherent advantage on the pay-front when it comes to enticing UK lawyers away from UK firms. Meanwhile, the UK firms struggle to recruit top talent in their US offices, which largely explains the logic behind Shearman & Sterling and Allen & Overy’s recent merger announcement.