Why the Big Law Talent War Weakens Resistance to Political Pressure

Key Takeaways

• Intensified competition for "transactional" lawyers, especially in M&A, has shifted Big Law focus towards poaching established stars rather than only internal promotion.
• Firms like Kirkland & Ellis pioneered aggressive talent acquisition by offering massive pay packages, disrupting traditional lock-step compensation models and boosting profits.
• Paul Weiss, led by Brad Karp, actively participated in this "arms race," notably poaching lawyers representing Apollo Global Management and later M&A star Scott Barshay.
• This "free-agent" model, while profitable, increases firm fragility, as highly paid partners with portable client bases are less loyal and may leave during adversity.
• The fear of partners and clients defecting ("bank run" analogy) appeared to influence firms like Paul Weiss to negotiate deals with the Trump administration rather than resist executive orders.
• Litigation-focused firms, often trained in adversarial roles against the government, have shown more willingness to fight back compared to transaction-heavy firms seeking government approvals.
• The shift towards maximizing individual partner profits has undermined the traditional professional ethic and collective action capabilities within the Big Law sector.
• Highly profitable firms involved in the talent war have largely refrained from joining legal briefs supporting firms targeted by Trump's executive orders.
• The focus on transactional work, requiring government approvals, may make deal-making partners more inclined to seek accommodation with political powers.

The Escalating War for Legal Talent

• Large law firms have increasingly moved away from the traditional model of cultivating talent internally over many years, instead viewing peer firms as prime recruiting grounds for established lawyers. This shift has intensified significantly over the past decade, particularly for transactional lawyers handling lucrative mergers and acquisitions (M&A) deals.
• Firms actively court top M&A partners with guaranteed compensation packages that can exceed $10 million or even $20 million annually, expecting these hires to bring substantial client business with them, creating a high-stakes "free-agent" market.
• While this model boosts individual lawyer earnings and overall firm profits significantly, it introduces a critical downside: increased fragility and diminished loyalty among partners, who may feel little incentive to remain if the firm faces challenges.
• The historical stability provided by partners spending most of their careers at one firm has eroded, making firms more susceptible to sudden departures of key personnel and their associated clients, a phenomenon compared by one professor to a bank run.

How Kirkland & Ellis Ignited the Bidding War

• The competition for legal talent seemed to accelerate after The American Lawyer began publishing firm rankings by profits per partner in the 1980s, making pay disparities transparent and facilitating poaching.
• Following the dot-com crash in the early 2000s, Kirkland & Ellis notably intensified this trend by targeting the booming private equity sector, recognizing the potential for large fees from advising on acquisitions and deals.
• Kirkland aggressively recruited deal-making lawyers from prestigious competitors, sometimes doubling or tripling their salaries, breaking from the traditional "lock-step" compensation systems where tenure heavily influenced pay. This strategy focused on paying highly productive lawyers based on their market value.
• The firm successfully poached talent from established New York firms like Cravath, Swaine & Moore, Skadden Arps, and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, significantly boosting its M&A practice and overall profitability; its profits per equity partner reportedly topped $9 million in 2024.

Paul Weiss Joins the Fray

• Paul Weiss, historically known more for litigation, recognized the growth potential in transactional work under the leadership of chairman Brad Karp, described as having a competitive streak. After doing some litigation for Apollo Global Management, Karp saw an opportunity.
• In 2011, Paul Weiss made a significant move by poaching roughly half a dozen lawyers from a competitor, many of whom worked extensively with the highly profitable client Apollo, bringing in hundreds of millions in revenue over the next decade.
• The firm continued its aggressive recruitment by luring Scott Barshay, a top M&A lawyer, from Cravath in 2016, and further raided Kirkland & Ellis for a dozen transactional lawyers by 2023, solidifying its position among the top M&A firms.
• This strategic shift towards high-value deal-making significantly increased Paul Weiss's financial success, nearly doubling its profits per equity partner (adjusted for inflation) between 2007 and 2024 to over $7.5 million.

Fragility, Fear, and Political Pressure

• The increased reliance on highly mobile, highly compensated transactional partners created inherent instability within firms like Paul Weiss. Poached partners might leave as quickly as they arrived, taking valuable client relationships with them, as client loyalty often resides with the individual lawyer, not the firm itself.
• Transactional partners are particularly coveted targets for recruitment, with data showing more than twice as many deal-making partners switching firms compared to litigators among top firms since 2018 (approx. 5,700 vs. 2,600).
• This underlying fragility and the fear of triggering an exodus of partners and clients appeared to motivate Paul Weiss chairman Brad Karp when negotiating with the Trump White House over potentially damaging executive orders, as he explicitly mentioned the risk of competitors soliciting their clients and attorneys.
• Following Paul Weiss's deal, other major firms heavily involved in transactional work, including Skadden, Milbank, Willkie Farr & Gallagher, Kirkland, Latham & Watkins, and Simpson Thacher, also reached agreements with the White House, suggesting similar concerns about potential destabilization.

Transactional vs. Litigation Cultures Under Pressure

• There's an argument that the nature of legal work influences a firm's response to government pressure. Litigators are often trained through pro bono work challenging government actions and frequently represent clients in adversarial proceedings against federal bodies.
• Transactional lawyers, conversely, often work on large deals (like M&A) that require explicit approval from various government agencies, potentially making them and their clients more sensitive to maintaining favorable relationships with the administration in power.
• This difference may explain why firms with a stronger emphasis on litigation, such as Jenner & Block, WilmerHale, and Susman Godfrey, have been more willing to legally challenge Trump's executive orders targeting law firms.
• Firms heavily reliant on transactional business, fearing disruption to deals and potential partner defections, have generally followed Paul Weiss's path of seeking accommodation rather than confrontation, highlighting how the talent war inadvertently weakened collective resistance.

Bottom Line

The intense, profit-driven competition for elite transactional lawyers has fragmented loyalty within Big Law, making firms structurally vulnerable to external pressures and less capable of unified opposition, as seen in their varied responses to the Trump administration's actions.