Another star corporate lawyer heads to Soho
A senior funds partner has become the 35th(!) Kirkland & Ellis lawyer to defect to Paul Weiss’ London office since rainmaker-rockstar Neel Sachdev made the switch last summer.
Jeremy Leggate, a Leeds University-educated former Clifford Chance trainee, is set to leave after nearly a decade at private equity juggernaut Kirkland. He will co-head the European investment funds team at Paul Weiss.
Only 16% of Paul Weiss’ rapidly expanding London office now pre-dates Sachdev, who has been playing Florentino Pérez in his own game of poach the partner since he made a dramatic exit from Kirkland a year ago. Alongside corporate hot-shot Roger Johnson, Sachdev brought with him a team of six capital markets, M&A and tax partners from Kirkland, and the firm has since seen six more partners make the same move.
It’s not just K&E at risk either. Since making the decision to build out its London operations last year, Paul Weiss has taken twelve-a-piece from Magic Circle players Clifford Chance and Linklaters (including nine partners) as well as seniors from Slaughter and May, Akin, Freshfields and Macfarlanes — just to name a few.
Leggate will join the rest of the defectors in Twitter’s (now X’s) old headquarters near Piccadilly Circus at 20 Air Street in Soho. The office is within touching distance of the firm’s private equity client base in Mayfair — hence the decision to buck the trend of law firms nestling down in the Square Mile — and is currently undergoing a refit, with a pizza oven (amongst other essentials) necessitating the facelift.
Hopefully, this means that they’ll be stone-baked goodies ready to serve by the time the first round of Paul Weiss London trainees join in September 2026.
The New York-headquartered outfit plans to recruit what Legal Cheek understands to be between five and ten trainees from this autumn, as part of its ambitious strategy to expand operations this side of the pond. In another Galactico hire, the firm has brought in high profile recruiter Paul Gascoyne from A&O Shearman to launch its programme.
The inaugural cohort will earn a market-topping £180,000 upon qualification. The Legal Cheek Firms Most List — where Paul Weiss will soon appear — shows that currently only one other law firm, fellow US player Gibson Dunn, offers this amount of cash to its NQs.
Trainee pay is yet to be finalised, but the firm will offer additional financial support including maintenance grants and covering law school fees.