Latham & Watkins advised on about $787 billion of M&A to top the Bloomberg Law league table, ahead of Kirkland & Ellis and Wachtell Lipton. On the most complex deals,the legal team adds as much value as the bankers, because due diligence and thefine print decide where risk sits. This guide ranks the 10 best M&A lawfirms by 2025 deal value and shows the marquee clients and landmark dealsbehind each. In our State of M&A report we see the same pattern: the dealsthat hold together are the ones where legal and commercial diligence run inlockstep.
DealRoom team works with many M&A law firms helping them organize M&A process and below, we look at the ten biggest, as well as providing detail on some of the transactions they’ve helped to close over the past period.
Start with this interactive comparison table we built based on research into the top M&A firms:
Top Corporate M&A Law Firms
- Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP
- Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP
- Kirkland & Ellis LLP
- Latham & Watkins LLP
- Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton, & Garrison LLP
- Simpson, Thatcher & Bartlett LLP
- Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP
- Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton
- Debevoise & Plimpton LLP
- Shearman & Sterling LLP
How We Evaluated
We ranked the top five firms on one measure: total M&A deal value advised in full-year 2025, as published in the Bloomberg Law 2025 M&A league tables, which cover completed or pending global transactions. Bloomberg Law publishes the top five publicly. Positions six through twenty sit behind its subscriber wall, so the remaining firms on this page appear without a rank rather than with one we cannot verify.
Every deal named below is a 2025 mandate confirmed against the advising firm’s own announcement. Where a firm’s role is stated as buy-side, sell-side or target counsel, that is how the firm itself described it.
League tables move more than most readers expect. Sidley Austin sat fifth on Bloomberg Law’s Q1 to Q3 2025 table at $240 billion and finished the year outside the top five entirely. Read any single year as a snapshot of who was busy, not a ranking of who is best.
Last reviewed August 2026. We refresh this page when full-year league tables publish each January.
Transparency note. DealRoom publishes this guide and sells M&A lifecycle software. We do not compete with any firm listed and take no fee from any of them. We link to each firm’s own site so you can go direct.
The role of the M&A legal team is not only to ensure that the headline details of the transaction are sound, but also that the finer details (‘the small print’) do not create any inherent risk for the buyer or seller.
Below, we look at the top M&A law firms in more detail:
Top Corporate M&A Law Firms
- Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP
- Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP
- Kirkland & Ellis LLP
- Latham & Watkins LLP
- Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP
- Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP
- Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP
- Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton
- Debevoise & Plimpton LLP
- A&O Shearman
The role of the M&A legal team is not only to ensure that the headline details of the transaction are sound, but also that the finer details ('the small print') do not create any inherent risk for the buyer or seller.
Below, we look at the top M&A law firms in more detail:
1. Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP
The client portfolio of Cravath, Swaine & Moore is probably the envy of many first tier investment banks, let alone the legal industry.
In 2025 it acted as target counsel to Kenvue on its $48.7 billion acquisition by Kimberly-Clark, one of the largest consumer health transactions on record. It also advised Axalta on its $25 billion merger of equals with AkzoNobel.
Walt Disney has been a client for decades. Cravath advised on its acquisition of Marvel, still cited as one of the most successful deals of the century.
2. Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP
Davis Polk is a fixture in M&A league tables, with particular depth in financial institutions and in deals carrying a restructuring overlay.
In 2025 it acted as counsel to Endo on its $6.7 billion merger with Mallinckrodt, a combination of two companies that had each been through Chapter 11 within the previous five years.
Other clients on its roster include ExxonMobil, Heineken and Comcast.
3. Kirkland & Ellis LLP
Kirkland & Ellis is the default choice for most large financial sponsors. It is the busiest firm in the market on private equity and sponsor-side work.
In 2025 it was lead counsel to the investor consortium on the $55 billion take-private of Electronic Arts, the largest take-private ever completed. It was also buy-side counsel to Kimberly-Clark on its $48.7 billion acquisition of Kenvue, opposite Cravath.
That pattern is worth noting when you pick counsel. On deals of this size the same handful of firms sit on both sides of the table, which makes an early conflicts check more useful than a long pitch process.
4. Latham & Watkins LLP
Latham advised on about $787 billion of M&A in 2025 to top the Bloomberg Law league table, on breadth rather than on any single mandate. Its strength runs across technology and life sciences on both sides of the Atlantic.
In 2025 it acted as counsel to CyberArk on its $25 billion acquisition by Palo Alto Networks. It also acted for Cox Enterprises on the $34.5 billion combination of Cox Communications with Charter.
Among its better known clients are AON and JP Morgan.
5. Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP
The blue chip clients of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison include IBM, Chevron, Kraft Heinz, General Electric and Apollo Global Management, one of the world's leading private equity firms.
What is notable here is the proliferation of conglomerates and sponsors, which is ripe territory for dealmaking. Those relationships account for most of the deals the firm works on.
In 2025 Paul Weiss was buy-side counsel to Rocket Companies on its acquisition of Mr. Cooper Group, announced in March at $9.4 billion and closed on 1 October at $14.2 billion.
6. Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP
Simpson Thacher & Bartlett's clients include Best Buy, the Boeing Corporation, Dell Technologies and Aramark. Its franchise is built on private equity. Sponsor-backed acquisitions and carve-outs are where it does most of its work.
In 2025 it acted as buy-side counsel to KKR on its £4.1 billion acquisition of Spectris. It also acted for Silver Lake on the buy-side of the $55 billion Electronic Arts take-private.
7. Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP
Skadden built its name on contested transactions with heavy regulatory exposure, which is still where it is strongest. Netflix is among its standout clients.
In 2025 it acted as buy-side counsel to Union Pacific on its $85 billion merger with Norfolk Southern, the largest rail combination ever attempted in the United States and a deal that will turn on regulatory clearance rather than on price.
8. Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton
Cleary Gottlieb's West Coast presence anchors its technology practice, alongside long-running cross-border and regulatory work.
In 2025 it acted as buy-side counsel to Alphabet on its $4.75 billion acquisition of Intersect Power, a deal that sits at the intersection of technology and energy infrastructure, an area drawing more acquirer attention as data centre power demand rises.
Its key clients include Google (Alphabet), 3M Company and General Mills.
9. Debevoise & Plimpton LLP
Debevoise & Plimpton has long been Amazon's corporate counsel of choice, having worked on most of the e-commerce group's major deals including the Whole Foods acquisition. Its other core strengths are insurance, asset management and sponsor consortium work.
Other notable clients include American Express and Johnson & Johnson.
In 2025 it advised the investor group led by Trian Fund Management and General Catalyst on the $7.4 billion acquisition of Janus Henderson. It also advised DAZN on its $2.2 billion acquisition of Foxtel.
10. A&O Shearman
Allen & Overy and Shearman & Sterling combined on 1 May 2024 to form A&O Shearman, roughly 4,000 lawyers across 28 countries. The merger created one of the few firms able to run a transatlantic deal out of a single partnership rather than through a referral relationship.
Its client roster includes Raytheon, the Dow Chemical Company, CVS Health Corp and Germany's SAP.
In 2025 it advised Genmab on its approximately $8 billion acquisition of Merus. It also advised LPL Financial on its $2.7 billion acquisition of Commonwealth Financial Network.
How to choose an M&A law firm
A league table tells you which firms were busiest. It does not tell you which one fits your deal. Six things do.
Deal size fit. The firms above are ranked on billions of dollars of aggregate deal value built from very large transactions. On a $30 million acquisition you will not get a senior team at any of them. The fee will not justify the engagement on either side.
Sponsor-side or corporate-side. Kirkland and Simpson Thacher built their franchises on private equity. Cravath and Wachtell built theirs on long-standing corporate relationships. A firm that spends most of its year across the table from sponsors runs a process differently from one that spends it representing them.
Buy-side or defense. Takeover defense is a distinct discipline with its own playbook. If there is any prospect of an unsolicited approach or an activist, ask what the firm has defended in the last two years, not what it has bought.
Regulatory exposure. If your deal will face a second request or a European Commission Phase II, antitrust depth matters more than M&A volume. Ask which of the firm’s own antitrust partners will be on the deal, by name.
Conflicts, checked early. Elite firms represent the counterparties, their sponsors and their lenders. Run a conflicts check before you share a target name, not after. A conflict discovered late costs weeks.
Who actually staffs it. The partner who pitches is not always the partner who runs the deal. Ask which team. Ask for their last three comparable mandates by size and sector.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which law firm advised on the most M&A in 2025?
Latham & Watkins, with about $787 billion of deal value, topped the Bloomberg Law 2025 M&A league table. Kirkland & Ellis followed at $743 billion and Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz at $621 billion. Rankings differ by provider: on Mergermarket’s full-year 2025 legal adviser table, Kirkland led at about $1 trillion with Latham second.
How much do M&A lawyers cost?
Partners at elite US firms bill roughly $1,600 to $3,000 an hour. Associates bill roughly $750 to $1,700. Kirkland & Ellis partner rates ran $1,195 to $2,465 an hour in 2024 court filings, with associates at $745 to $1,495. One important caveat: almost every published rate card comes from bankruptcy fee applications, because M&A engagement letters are not filed publicly. Treat these as indicative of the firms, not of M&A pricing specifically.
Why does Wachtell bill differently?
Wachtell does not price by the hour. Its published retention policy states that fees are based on “the intensity of the firm’s efforts, the responsibility assumed, the complexity of the matter and the result achieved”. Historically that has worked out at around 1% of deal value on matters under $250 million, falling to roughly 0.1% or less above $25 billion. The structure became public in unusual detail when X Corp. sued the firm to recover a $90 million fee for work on the Twitter acquisition.
What does an M&A lawyer actually do?
Four things, roughly in order. They run legal due diligence on the target and translate what they find into risk you can price. They draft and negotiate the purchase agreement, including the representations, the indemnities and the conditions to closing. They manage regulatory clearance, which on a large deal means antitrust filings in multiple jurisdictions. Then they run the mechanics of signing and closing. On a competitive process they also advise the board on its fiduciary duties.
Do I need an elite firm or will my corporate counsel do?
It depends on what can go wrong rather than on deal size alone. General corporate counsel handles a clean, uncontested acquisition of a private company competently. Bring in a specialist when the deal is public, contested, cross-border or heavily regulated, or where the consideration includes equity in the buyer. The cost of getting a purchase agreement wrong is measured against the deal, not against the fee.
What is a conflicts check and why does it delay deals?
Before a firm can act it must confirm it does not already represent an adverse party, which at a firm of several thousand lawyers means checking every office and practice. Because the firms on this page also represent the sponsors and lenders likely to be on the other side, conflicts are common. Run the check before you disclose a target name. Discovering one late can cost a week or more while you retain another firm.
Elite boutique or full-service firm for a mid-market deal?
Below roughly $500 million, the practical choice is usually between a strong regional firm and the mid-market practice of a national one, not between the firms on this page. What matters at that size is whether the partner on the pitch is the partner on the deal. Also whether the firm closes deals of your shape regularly enough to have precedent to work from.
.png){kind=small}
.avif)
