Bloomberg Law: Paul Weiss Climbs Deals Chart to Challenge Wall Street M&A Elite

By Mahira Dayal & Megan Tribe | Feb. 17, 2025, 2:00 AM PST

• Paul Weiss ranked fifth in M&A deals, topping Cravath, Wachtell

• Litigation-focused firm’s Apollo transactions work opened door

Paul Weiss, long known as a top-tier litigation law firm, has surpassed storied New York rivals to also become a mergers and acquisitions behemoth.

The firm’s lawyers advised on more than $261 billion worth of deals last year to rank fifth on Bloomberg Law’s League Tables, up from 31st a decade ago. Paul Weiss topped M&A stalwarts including New York’s Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz, Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, and Cravath Swaine & Moore.

“Paul Weiss is definitely no longer just a very powerful litigation firm,” said Alisa Levin, co-founder of search firm Greene-Levin-Snyder Legal Search Group. “They’re a major corporate player in M&A.”

The change is noteworthy for a Manhattan-founded firm that for decades was known mainly as a destination for litigation work. Its high-profile litigation roster, led by litigation heavyweights like Karen Dunn, Jessica Carey, Kannon Shanmugam Ted Wells Jr. and Elizabeth Stotland Weiswasser, includes former US Attorney General Loretta Lynch and former US Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson.

Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison began landing more deals work in the early 2000s, thanks in part to the then-head of its corporate team, Bob Schumer. The firm got a significant boost around 2008 when Apollo Global Management shifted its corporate work to Paul Weiss, which gave the firm credibility in the private equity market and opened the door to similar clients, Chairman Brad Karp said in podcast last July.

The firm got a shot in the arm when longtime Cravath Swaine & Moore public company dealmaker Scott Barshay came aboard in 2016. Barshay, who now heads Paul Weiss’ M&A team, has steered major deals for companies including Chevron Corp. and International Business Machines Corp.

Barshay’s hire “created this cascade effect of them being able to then go into the market, from a credibility standpoint, and really scale up,” said Todd Merkin, New York-based executive director of Wegman Partners.

Barshay led teams last year that worked on US-based corrugated packaging company WestRock’s $20 billion combination with Europe’s Smurfit Kappa to create Smurfit WestRock. He also assisted GE’s spin-off of energy company GE Vernova Inc. and the launch of GE Aerospace.

The firm is “not afraid of making big investments and big plays,” said Michelle Fivel, partner and co-founder at search firm Hatch Henderson Fivel. “It’s clearly paid off for them, as far as deal flow is concerned.”

Paul Weiss brought on Sullivan & Cromwell dealmaker Krishna Veeraraghavan in 2021, and former Morgan Stanley top executive Robert Kindler joined the firm in 2023. It added M&A partner Jim Langston from Cleary in May, and picked up Laura Turano in 2019 from Davis Polk & Wardwell.

“I don’t think it would have looked this way if Scott hadn’t come” to the firm in 2016, Levin said. “They gave him a really, really good runway and all the support.”

Barshay and Paul Weiss declined to comment.

Leaderboard Shifts

The rise of Paul Weiss has accompanied a broad change in the competitive landscape for M&A, long dominated by firms based in Manhattan.

Allen & Overy and Shearman & Sterling, which merged last year, held top spots for a decade before falling to 19th in 2024, Bloomberg League Tables show. Weil Gotshal & Manges, which ranked seventh a decade ago, fell to 22nd last year.

Weil lost corporate lawyers to rivals such as Freshfields, Paul Hastings, and Jones Day over the last two years. The firm saw partner Peter Feist decamp to Cravath, where he now heads its private equity team.

A&O Shearman lost corporate lawyers over that same time period to Kirkland & Ellis, Sidley Austin, and Paul Weiss. New York dealmaker George Casey, former co-managing partner of Shearman, along with a four-lawyer team to Linklaters.

“We are in this market of free agency at the partner level and it’s become hyper competitive as far as talent acquisition as well as talent retention,” Merkin said. Firms that have lost talent are going to be targets for rivals that are taking up market share, he said.

Cravath, which recently has dipped its toe in the lateral market, and Wachtell, meanwhile, have been slower to respond with aggressive hires from rivals. Those firms have “heavily relied on institutional clients and partners who did not feel the need or pressured to develop new client relationships,” said Katherine Loanzon, a managing director at search firm Kinney Recruiting.

“Times are now changing, with competitors coming up close behind and exceeding them.”

Different Approaches

The shuffling at the top of the rankings spotlights differing approaches to deals.

Kirkland and Latham, the top deals firms last year, focus on scoring a high volume of transactions. Kirkland worked on 767 deals with an average size of $1.7 billion, while Latham worked on 561 with an average size of $1.3 billion.

Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom—the sole New York-founded firm to outrank Paul Weiss on the 2024 league tables—worked on 182 deals with an average deal size of $3.2 billion.

Wachtell and Cravath, meanwhile, worked on fewer—but bigger—transactions. Cravath guided 45 deals last year with an average size of $4.6 billion. Wachtell worked on 64 with an average size of $4.5 billion.

Paul Weiss fell between the two approaches. Its lawyers handled 224 M&A deals with average size of $2.1 billion last year.

“Many firms have a strategy that prioritize growth of their work on both large and mid sized deals with both large and mid sized funds and strategics,” said Kent Zimmermann, a principal at law firm consultancy The Zeughauser Group. There are outliers that don’t feel the need to scale and are extremely focused and “are the best or among the best in almost everything on which they focus,” he said.

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