Law360 extensively quotes Edwards Gibson in article: “London’s Rainmaker Wars Make Partnerships More Fragile”

Law360 has extensively quoted Edwards Gibson director Scott Gibson and has drawn on Edwards Gibson partner moves data in its examination of how the battle for private capital rainmakers is making Big Law partnerships increasingly fragile.

The article, “London’s Rainmaker Wars Make Partnerships More Fragile”, by Marialuisa Taddia, reports that Edwards Gibson has recorded 16 partner departures from Weil’s London office so far this year, more than any other firm in its data.

Scott Gibson explains that the particular economics of private capital make the consequences of losing leading rainmakers potentially more acute. Client relationships in areas such as leveraged finance and private equity can be “exceptionally valuable and unusually portable”, with individual partners controlling portable relationships worth tens of millions of dollars.

He warns that a firm suffering a series of significant departures can experience what amounts to a “run on the partnership”, whereby departures reduce profitability, encouraging further departures and in turn putting additional pressure on profitability. Scott nevertheless stresses that this should not be taken as a prediction of collapse at Weil, which he describes as an elite New York law firm with a formidable brand.

The Law360 analysis echoes themes explored by Edwards Gibson in its 2025 article Big Law Jenga: How Private Capital Stars Are Making Elite Firms Unstable, which examined how Big Law’s increasing reliance on highly portable private capital rainmakers has weakened traditional partnership cohesion and increased the concentration risk within elite law firms.

The Law360 article also features commentary from other legal market commentators on the impact of intense lateral competition, changing partner remuneration structures and declining institutional loyalty. One commentator even reaches for the same “Jenga” analogy to describe how successive departures can bring a firm closer to a tipping point.

Read the full Law360 article here (paywall)

Read the Edwards Gibson article ‘Big Law Jenga: How Private Capital Stars Are Making Elite Firms Unstable’ here