This week, The Texas Lawbook takes another historic look at M&A activity through our annual CDT rankings, highlighting the firms that have shaped the dealmaking landscape year by year. These leaderboards reflect the volume and significance of transactions handled by the firms going back to 2018, offering a clear view of how the competitive field has evolved over time.
Covering each year from since 2018, the data captures both consistency at the top (Vinson & Elkins) and the emergence of new players in the M&A arena (Kirkland, Latham and Gibson) over that timespan.
The individual yearly leaderboards are provided below, allowing for easy comparison across this eight-year period.
The Lawbook prioritizes Texas-led transactions since the law firms representing the buyers, sellers and targets almost always earn more money because they have more lawyers from different practice groups, including antitrust, employment, executive compensation, securities and tax, working on the deals. Transactions led for principals by Texas lawyers are the gold standard for measuring activity by the state’s dealmakers.
To get a broader picture of activity, the CDT also measures Texas-related transactions, which count lawyers representing investment banks, conflicts committees, or other third-party players, and includes Texas-led deals in the total.
Below, you’ll find the M&A rankings for law firms from 2018 through 2025 for individual years for both deal count and deal value. In instances where a firm itself was part of a merger, the name the firm held at the end of the calendar year is how it is presented below in the leaderboards.
2018
2019
2020
2021
2022
2023
2024
2025
