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Far from the clusters of law firms in the city, about 200 commercial lawyers worked in a hurry at the former Twitter Office in Soh, the Whole Foods Branch. Here is the fast-growing London office of Paul, Weissa, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, until recently the most important law firm in New York.
“We exercise in New York,” he said Judge Simon Rifkind, a legendary litigation partner, 1963 in a statement of the company’s principle. This suddenly changed at the end of 2023 when Paul Weiss spread to English law, turning to stars from other law companies in London, especially his larger US rival Kirkland & Ellis.
The star from Neel Sachdeva, a British debt expert for private capital companies (“My work is l in LBO”) did not come. Sachdev, with long hair and bead bracelets, has an air of a legal wolf, though kind. He and his co -head Roger Johnson, who also connected From Kirkland, they built a credible job with extraordinary speed.
Paul Weiss has offered great recruits for recruits that could bring a lucrative job in London. The company’s profit in capital 2023 was $ 6.5 million, and Sachde’s rivals said it was on a double -digit salary package and others also offered great prizes (they would not comment). “They threw the rock into the pool and the cracks spread,” says one partner of a law firm in the UK.
But Gambit Paul Weiss had a wider influence than Inflatable legal salary in London. Together with US companies, including Latham & Watkins and Kirkland, this has been a long -term importance to lasting importance and a global financial role of English commercial law. Although Brexit has extinguished part of the dominance of the city in banking, the law that relates to finances succeeds.
US companies have invested more in London than other European cities. “You have to act for a public and private capital in New York and in London. Everything else is incrementary, “notes an American lawyer. Paul Weiss opened an office in Brussels and hired Nicole Kar, Linklaste’s antitrust partner, but London is his main focus.
The appetite for larger city hubs than the US law in New York reflects the globalization of finance. The London Bureau of Apollo Global Management is close to Paul Weiss in Soho -Ii is one of the largest clients. Private capital funds have many contracts under English law, as well as the jurisdiction of US states and want New York companies to have a similar range.
“Over time, not being in London means to exclude yourself from a large part of the corporate and private capital business,” Sachdev says. Restructuring or bankruptcy can, for example, be done in the USA in Chapter 11 or the English arrangement scheme, and companies must be what it calls “Ambidextrous”. The New York tradition of transmitting English right to a “best friend” in the UK fades.
But the US expansion asks two questions. One is the effect on the salary and impact on legal accounts. “The legal industry seems to create its own paid bubble. . . I hear a lot of frustration from corporate clients about what’s going on, “says Julian Taylor, an older partner at Simmons & Simmons. Private capital companies can tolerate salary inflation, but others resent him.
The second question is whether it will endure it. Paul Weiss expanded in London in about 15 months from a small office to about 40 partners and a total of 210 lawyers covering areas, including merging and acquisitions and intellectual property. His New York partners have invested a lot to get outside their domestic market and want this expensive employment to pay off.
This turns to whether US companies will bring more legal work to London or just take most of the same revenue. “These employees do not create a larger market. They just start a job,” says one American lawyer. Sachdev believes that the market can be expanded and says that Gambit Paul Weiss is already working: “This office is financially accepted in the company in one year.”
The ultimate test is whether the US company not only grows quickly, but creates a stable culture in London. This requires knitting a lot of ego and promoting it inside, not that a set of employment machine is. Sachdev says he has now reached a critical mass, and “my definition of our success is how much partner we can promote organically from year to year.”
For now, he has created more disorders than growth for the legal industry of London as a whole. But even this is welcome, both for the primacy of the English law and as a commitment to the city – and Soho.
John.gapper@ft.com
