Correction — A&O Shearman Moves Up in 2025 CDT M&A Rankings: In January, the Sunday Corporate Deal Tracker newsletter misstated A&O Shearman’s position in the 2025 M&A deal count rankings due to a production error by The Texas Lawbook. The firm was incorrectly credited with only 39 deals valued at $9.9 billion. In reality, A&O Shearman should have been credited with 51 transactions valued at $12.7 billion for 2025, which is reflected in the story and associated rankings below. The Lawbook regrets the error and apologizes to A&O Shearman. We strive for complete accuracy in our CDT rankings and related coverage. If you have questions about the data, please don’t hesitate to contact Editor Jeff Schnick and Data Producer Christi Trammell.
As deal activity continues to evolve, fundings have become an essential component for measuring transactional work done by law firms with offices in Texas, offering a clear view into how companies are financed and scaled.
At the request of multiple firms and dealmakers over 10 months, The Texas Lawbook is now introducing funding league tables alongside our existing Corporate Deal Tracker rankings. Readers can find the firm and individual dealmaker funding rankings in this story, while a searchable Master List for fundings launches July 5.
Separately, some housekeeping about the CDT rankings: The Lawbook initially released its 2025 rankings earlier this year to a select audience of dealmakers who subscribed to our Sunday Corporate Deal Tracker newsletter, providing them with an early look at the data shaping the market.
Today, we are making those rankings available to our full readership on our website and across this week’s newsletters, expanding access to the insights and performance benchmarks that matter most to the Texas deal community.
Moving forward, the rankings will be available on all of our platforms a few days after they are initially published in the Sunday CDT newsletter.
Also, in the days ahead, we will take a broader, historical view of the market by examining the top-performing firms since 2018, along with the dealmakers behind those results. That analysis will highlight the lawyers and their firms who have consistently led transactions over time, including the top overall deal leaders across multiple rankings periods.
This expanded coverage sets the stage for the release of The Lawbook’s 1H 2026 Corporate Deal Tracker rankings, which begin rolling out next week now that the second quarter is near a close.
FUNDINGS
As a new component of our CDT rankings, the fundings league tables will continue to evolve with input from our subscribers. Firms and dealmakers interested in ensuring their transactions are reflected in future rankings are encouraged to submit funding deals through the weekly CDT Roundup.
Moving forward, The Lawbook will publish fundings leaderboards for both 1H and year-end periods.
For questions about submissions, methodology, or eligibility, please contact Data Producer Christi Trammell at christi.trammell@texaslawbook.net.
Willkie recorded the most Texas-led fundings transactions for last year, reporting 42 of them for a total value of $2.3 billion. Kirkland led the value for fundings last year, with $6.5 billion reported to the CDT.
Willkie also took the top spot for the most Texas-related fundings in 2025, as Texas-related includes the Texas-led transactions. The eight additional deals brought Willkie to 50 transactions valued at $2.7 billion.
Unsurprisingly, the top dealmaker in the funding leaderboard is from Willkie, with Joe Laurel in Houston recording 39 deals last year for a value of $771 million.
When ranked by value, Kirkland’s Susan Eisenberg in Houston tallied $3.6 billion on two fundings in 2025, just ahead of Weil’s Richard Frye in Dallas, who recorded more than $3.5 billion on three transactions.
Laurel added five more transactions in the Texas-related rankings, which boosted his value to more than $1.1 billion. Eisenberg’s two deals also led this overall category for value.
M&A
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.
As we reported in January, by nearly every measure, 2025 was the most active year for transactions since The Lawbook launched its Corporate Deal Tracker more than a decade ago. Across Texas, dealmakers found themselves busier than ever, as volume and value leapt to all-time CDT highs last year.
According to the CDT, lawyers based in Texas, or advising from Texas on deals around the world, handled 1,734 unique M&A transactions last year, a staggering 31.8 percent increase from 2024. The total value of those deals hit $1.2 trillion, a 64.5 percent jump year-over-year.
To put that in perspective, all four quarters of 2025 rank among the most active in CDT history.
At the top of the Texas-led leaderboard sits the familiar presence of Kirkland & Ellis, the behemoth that has become synonymous with corporate dealmaking in the Lone Star State. In 2025, Kirkland led or co-led 256 deals for principal clients valued at $395.4 billion. That’s a commanding lead over every competitor in both volume and value in terms of Texas-led transactions, continuing the firm’s recent dominance.
Gibson Dunn claimed the second spot with 100 Texas-led deals worth $62.9 billion.
When ranked by total value rather than count, the hierarchy shifted slightly but told the same story: Kirkland is again in a league of its own, followed by V&E.
Texas lawyers were everywhere deals were being made last year (and for all parties). To get a broader picture of activity, the CDT 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.
Once again, Kirkland topped the list by deal count, logging 268 Texas-related transactions, valued at $413.2 billion.
But by deal value, Latham took first place, recording 217 transactions worth an eye-popping $446.1 billion.
When re-ranked purely by value, the Top 5 (Latham, Kirkland, Gibson Dunn, Simpson Thacher and Sidley) show how the global transactional giants have cemented their stake in Texas.
Still, three of the Top 10 Texas-related firms, V&E, Haynes Boone and Gray Reed, proved their talent can hold their own in the deal landscape against the out-of-state heavyweights in terms of deal volume.
At the top of the Texas-led dealmaker charts for 2025 is Gibson Dunn’s Michael Piazza, who led or co-led 28 deals for principal clients valued at $4.86 billion, and Gray Reed’s Philip Jordan, who led or co-led 28 deals for $1.81 billion.
When re-ranked by value, the leader of the Texas-led category is Kirkland’s Andrew Calder, who recorded $78 billion in value for the deals he led or co-led. Trailing just behind him is his Kirkland colleague, Kim Hicks, whose seven deals she led or co-led were valued at $77.5 billion.
In fact, it was a clean Kirkland sweep for the Top Five when ranked by value. Simpson Thacher’s Shamus Crosby came in at No. 6 with $42.7 billion in value for the 10 deals he led or co-led.
Because the Texas-related category includes Texas-led deals in its overall total, the same five lawyers in both Texas-led deal count and deal value led the Texas-related categories, as well.
It’s not unusual that a lawyer who fared well in the Texas-led rankings also does the same in Texas-related. But some dealmakers represent more third parties than others, and some lawyers only report deals to the CDT in which they represented a principal.
While there will appear to be a lot of repetition, there are some differences in the Texas-related leaderboards for that reason.
For M&A transactions valued at $1 billion or more, it’s no surprise that Kirkland took the top spot, recording 54 last year valued at $363.2 billion, or just under $7 billion per deal.
V&E and Latham came in second when ranked by deal count, while Gibson Dunn came in second by value at $55.9 billion.
Latham led in the Texas-related category for megadeals (68) and value ($416 billion), followed by Kirkland and Gibson Dunn.
Kirkland took three of the top spots in this category, while Simpson Thacher took the other two to round out the top five. Brittany Sakowitz led in deal count with six $1 billion-plus transactions last year, while Calder and Hicks dominated their three other Kirkland colleagues when measured by Texas-led $1 billion-plus value.
The only meaningful change to the Top 5 in this category is that Gibson Dunn’s Hillary Holmes comes in fifth with five deals that total $37.9 billion.
CAPITAL MARKETS
Latham dominated CapM activity last year when measured by number of deals, with 83 Texas-led transactions tallying $59.9 billion, followed by V&E and Kirkland. The latter took the top spot by value for Texas-led CapM deals.
Same song, slightly longer verse: Latham sits atop this category for both deal count (133) and deal value ($112.8 billion), but Hunton AK vaulted into the second spot.
No one had more Texas-led CapM deals last year than Latham’s David Miller in Austin, who recorded 31 transactions valued at $26.4 billion. His colleague in Houston, Ryan Maierson, came in second with 27 transactions valued at $12.3 billion.
When ranked by value, Kirkland’s Michael Rigdon of Houston took the top spot, with seven deals totaling $29.9 billion.
