Biglaw

Kirkland & Ellis's Lateral Partner Pickups Are Pure Fire

At K&E, they do everything bigger, even lateral hires.

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Fresh off its ascension to the top of the Am Law 100 ranking by gross revenue, Kirkland & Ellis has gone on a bit of a binge, racking up big-name lateral partners all year long. But when you have $3.165 billion to throw around, well, that’ll buy you a lot of lawyers.

As reported by Law.com, the latest lateral making their way to K&E is capital markets partner Sophia Hudson,  leaving from Davis Polk & Wardwell. As is typical in lateral moves, the firm getting the attorney is filled with glowing things to say about their new hire:

“Sophia is a talented lawyer and we are delighted to welcome her to Kirkland and look forward to integrating her into our New York and global capital markets team,” said a statement from a Kirkland spokeswoman.

But this is K&E and they do everything bigger. Over the past year, they’ve added a lot more people to their partnership than just Hudson. They added to the partnership of their corporate department with the additions of former Simpson Thacher & Bartlett associate Michael Reeves and former Weil counsel Kevin Crews. They lured former K&E associate Robert Allen back to the firm as a partner after a stint as a federal prosecutor. Health care transactional partner Chad Ehrenkranz joined K&E from DLA Piper, former Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer associate Leon Daoud joined K&E as a funds practice partner, ex-Shearman & Sterling associate Wanda Woo joined K&E as a corporate partner, and former Steptoe & Johnson international trade and national security attorney Anthony Rapa also joined the K&E partnership. And there was former counsel at Weil, Gotshal & Manges, Ryan Gorsche, who joined K&E as a partner. Two former Morrison & Foerster attorneys, financial regulatory and compliance partner Robert Fleishman and international trade and natural security of counsel Ali Zaidi, joined this summer. Plus there was the addition of former Cravath litigation attorney Rachel Fritzler, former Davis Polk private equity attorney Abhishek Kolay, corporate partner David D’Souza from Clifford Chance, and tax partner Karen Lee from Skadden.

But wait! There’s more: Former Choate, Hall & Stewart private equity co-chair Christian Atwood joined K&E this year, as did two Debevoise & Plimpton bigwigs, Erica Berthou, former global head of the investment management and funds group, and former deputy corporate chair Jordan Murray. Plus former DLA Piper partner Dennis Williams joined the K&E corporate practice in New York and former chair of the IP Transactions Practice and Technology & Sourcing Practice at Jenner & Block, Adam Petravicius, joined the firm. Jennifer Perkins, formerly the co-chair of Latham & Watkins’ global private equity practice, joined K&E, as did former Norton Rose Fulbright project finance partner Rohit Chaudhry.

That’s… a lot of new partners, plus the firm had its biggest ever class of new partners in 2018. But since K&E is known for its large, non-equity tier of partners, not everyone is going to get a bite of the firm’s impressive revenue.

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headshotKathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

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