Ben Thomson

Private Equity Eyes $700m WSHB Deal in Major Test for Big Law’s Ownership Rules

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WSHB LawFuel

The announcement that Charlesbank Capital Partners is reportedly in advanced discussions over a transaction involving national law firm Wood Smith Henning & Berman (WSHB), valued at about $700 million, according to the Financial Times., shows that private equity interest is moving beyond the contingency fee and consumer market. Neither Charlesbank nor WSHB has publicly announced

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What Will Clients Still Pay Lawyers For When AI Can Do The Work?

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BillablehourandAI

The robot lawyers are coming. AI will replace lawyers . . yada yada, we hear it all. But is that the wrong question lawyers should be asking. The real question is what will clients still pay lawyers to do when AI can research, review, summarise, draft and analyse increasing amounts of legal work in minutes?

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BigLaw’s Private Equity Moment -The Next Deal Won’t Be Paul Weiss

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Privateequity

Private Equity And Big Law Moves Paul Weiss, Quinn Emanuel and Proskauer have reportedly held preliminary conversations about outside capital, providing a key signal that private equity has found the back-office door into American law. LawFuel has been tracking that door since private equity first began eyeing Big Law and top firms started opening it.

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Wachtell’s Waterloo And The Chaos Marty Lipton Spent 50 Years Preventing

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Wachtell’s Summer of Love – And The Day Marty’s Firm Got Old What would brilliant lawyer Marty Lipton make of it? Restructuring and finance partners walking out in unison, litigation partners follow and a partner is filmed cosying up in Bryant Park when he should probably be billing. The once‑unthinkable idea of Wachtell Lipton coming

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Brown Rudnick’s 34‑Lawyer IP Raid Shows Big Law’s Lateral Arms Race Is Far From Over

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Vince Guglielmotti lawfuel

What Brown Rudnick’s Major Hire Signals For Big Law’s Lateral Wars Brown Rudnick has just fired another shot in Big Law’s lateral wars, landing the largest group hire in the firm’s history and using it to plant a fresh flag in Silicon Valley. The Boston‑headquartered firm has recruited a 34‑lawyer intellectual property litigation and patent

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Second Office Romance Report Deepens Wachtell’s Extraordinary Week

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Nat cullerton lawyer

And The Lawyer Who Stands To Lose Millions In The Transfer Deal The Central Park “canoodling couple” story we covered this week may have dominated social media, but the story surrounding Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz keeps growing. Fresh claims published by the New York Post allege that William “Bill” Savitt, the ‘law star’ trial

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Macfarlanes Hits £3.1m PEP – Proof That Staying Small Still Beats the Magic Circle

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Macfarlanes

Macfarlanes has done it. Average pay for full-equity partners at the elite City firm has risen 8% to £3.1 million, smashing through the £3 million mark and leaving its larger Magic Circle rivals trailing by roughly a million pounds each. Turnover climbed more than 10% to £371.4 million, generating operating profit of £206.5 million. The

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Trump DOJ Subpoenas 14 Big Law Firms in ABA ‘Intimidation’ Fight

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Trump subpoena

Justice Department demands records and depositions from firms that settled and those that fought Trump executive orders, reviving questions over executive power, privilege and law firm independence The U.S. Justice Department has subpoenaed 14 major law firms as part of its response to an ABA lawsuit challenging Trump‑era executive orders and alleged intimidation of the

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The Great BigLaw Heist. How Private Equity Is Buying Law Firms Through the Back Door

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Lawfirm privateequity

Private equity can’t own a US law firm. So it bought everything else — and 2026 is the year the profession worked out that this was not a hypothetical. Ben Thomson, LawFuel contributing editor For decades the answer to “can outside investors own a piece of your law firm?” was a flat no, and the

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