Ben Thomson

Kirkland Wins Again As BigLaw’s M&A Machine Has Its Best Six Months Since Records Began

Big Law, Featured, Press Releases, US Law / July 4, 2026

Kirkland & Ellis leads the M&A rankings as the Chicago-founded firm advised on 350 deals worth close to $474.5 billion in the first half of 2026, being a comfortable 18% ahead of second-placed Skadden’s $402.8 billion across just 105 deals, according to LSEG data. All of which points once again to why Kirklands continue to reign supreme in partner remuneration.

Sullivan & Cromwell, which had briefly held the top spot in Q1, slipped to third with $395 billion. Wachtell Lipton rounded out the top four at $367.7 billion.
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Is Addleshaw Goddard’s the UK’s Next Global Elite Contender?”

Law Firms, Power Briefs, Power Firms, UK Law / July 2, 2026

How Addleshaw Goddard Turned Nine Years of Growth into a £1.1m PEP Story Ben Thomson, LawFuel contributing editor Addleshaw Goddard has dropped another set of headline‑grabbing numbers, posting 17% growth in both revenue and profit and pushing partner profits to £1.1 million for the year to 30 April 2026. It’s the firm’s ninth consecutive year

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Sidley Just Made 52 Partners Showing The Salaried Tier Is BigLaw’s New Default

Power Firms, UK Law / June 22, 2026

On 2 June 2026, Sidley elected 52 new partners. That is up 79% from its December 2025 class of 29 and reportedly the first and only summer round the firm intends to run. Sidley is the eleventh elite firm to create a salaried partner role since Cravath broke the seal in November 2023. The list

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SpaceX’s $75 Billion Liftoff – Meet the Lawyers Steering History’s Biggest IPO

Featured, Law Firms, Power Firms, Power Law Firms - Global, US Law / June 13, 2026

Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher is steering SpaceX through what has become the largest stock market debut ever, while Davis Polk & Wardwell is guiding the underwriting banks led by Goldman Sachs. Reports from Bloomberg indicate that SpaceX has committed to $25.5 million in legal costs in its amended S-1 — a figure that dwarfs the typical IPO legal spend, though it’s broadly in line with what other mega-deals have paid out.

For context, the largest US IPO of 2025, Medline’s $6.3 billion listing advised by Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, generated $25.2 million in legal fees and expenses, while Cerebras Systems’ $5.5 billion IPO, handled by Latham & Watkins, racked up $4.1 million.

SpaceX’s number sits almost exactly where Medline landed except SpaceX is aiming for a deal roughly twelve times the size.

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UK Law Firms Are Finally Coming for the Billable Hour – Sort Of

Featured, Law Firm Management, Law Firms / June 10, 2026

The billable hour isn’t dead in the UK, but for the first time it’s looking genuinely ill. A growing slice of work is being priced on fixed or value‑based fees, clients are pushing back on “time spent” as a proxy for value, and AI is quietly blowing up the economics of the sacred six‑minute unit.

And we’ve talked about the BH’s death many times before.

The billable hour’s first real wobble

UK legal spend is still mostly billed hourly, but value‑based and fixed‑fee work has crept up to take a sizeable minority share of the market, and it’s moving in one direction. Clients like predictability, finance teams like budgetable numbers, and nobody likes the month‑end surprise when a “quick” matter turns into a timesheet novella.

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America’s Biggest Personal Injury Firm Eyes Billion-Dollar Private Equity Deal — and a Future IPO

Big Law, Power Firms, Power Law Firms - Global, US Law / June 8, 2026

e firm that built its empire on highway billboards and the populist slogan “For the People” is now talking to Wall Street.

Morgan & Morgan, the largest personal injury law firm in the United States, has hired JPMorgan to explore a minority stake sale that could raise more than $1 billion and pave the way for a public listing years from now.

Morgan & Morgan founder John Morgan, a Florida-based billionaire and political donor, confirmed he was exploring deal options in a statement to Bloomberg Law, describing the discussions as “purely exploratory” with no immediate plan or timeline in place. “We’re simply listening to people smarter than us and working to understand the pros and cons,” he told BloombergLaw.

The story, first reported by the Financial Times and subsequently confirmed by Reuters and Bloomberg Law, lands as a landmark moment for the US legal services industry, which has long resisted outside capital while watching adjacent professional services sectors transform under private equity ownership.

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Sex, Secrecy, and AI -How the Eleanor Ross Scandal Blew Up ‘Confidential’ Judicial Discipline

Featured, Law Firms, US Law / May 30, 2026

This is more than a ‘sex scandal’ case and shows that standard redaction and anonymisation techniques are no match for AI‑enhanced pattern matching Ben Thomson, LawFuel contributing editor The “sex in chambers” angle was always going to dominate: a federal judge carrying on an affair with a senior Atlanta police official, including sexual encounters in

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The $8 Billion Fight That Shows Why Litigation Is Still the City’s Ultimate Blood Sport

Headlining, Law Stars - LawFuel's Leading Lawyers Profiles, LawStars, UK Law / May 25, 2026

A monster battle is unfolding in the sprawling claim against audit powerhouse PwC, born from the spectacular implosion of Chinese property behemoth China Evergrande, the most indebted property group in the world.

Senior silks like Richard Handyside KC, the Fountain Court Chambers’ Head, are facing off against those from 3 Verulam Buildings (3VB) where Adrian Beltrami KC represents the liquidators as they battle over allegations of negligence and misrepresentation in the $8.4 billion battle.

The numbers are eye-watering, even by City standards. Evergrande’s liquidators (led by Alvarez & Marsal’s Edward Middleton and Tiffany Wong) are pursuing 57 billion yuan (roughly $8.4 billion) in damages from PwC International, PwC Hong Kong, and PwC’s mainland China arm. They allege serious audit negligence and misrepresentation in the years leading up to Evergrande’s historic collapse, a King-sized property failure in a long list of major property failures.

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Paul Weiss Loses Two More Litigation Partners As Rivals Keep Picking Off Its Bench

Headlining, US Law / May 25, 2026

Paul Weiss Loses Two More Litigators As “Everything Is Fine” Narrative Gets Harder To Sell Ben Thomson, LawFuel contributing editor The litigation talent-bleed at Paul Weiss has not stopped, but has merely broadened its practice focus. Two more senior partners are heading for the exits, adding to a rolling series of departures that has turned

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Panel Games: Revolut’s New Legal Model is a Quarterly Hunger Games for Big Law

Headlining, Law Firm Technology, Law Firms / May 22, 2026

If you’re a partner at a Magic Circle firm currently leaning back in your Herman Miller chair, comforted by the warmth of a three-year panel appointment, you might want to sit up. The fintech disruptor that refuses to play by the rules is, predictably, about to break yours.

Revolut, the neobank recently valued at a staggering $45 billion following a secondary share sale (with some internal projections whispering closer to $75 billion), is officially binning the traditional legal panel model. In its place comes “Revolut Partners,” a system designed to treat law firms less like venerable institutions and more like high-performance software vendors.
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