Kirkland M&A Star Schiele Bolts in ‘Elite’ Bid for Paul Hastings

Paul Hastings has hired M&A dealmaker Eric Schiele from Kirkland & Ellis, scoring a significant coup for the law firm’s growing deals practice.

Schiele has guided some of the biggest deals in recent years, including snack food maker Kellanova’s $36 billion sale to Mars Inc. He’s advised on M&A transactions worth more than $1.2 trillion over the course of his nearly three-decade career, according to his law firm bio.

The hire from Kirkland, the world’s largest law firm by revenue and the top M&A legal adviser last year, stands out among a throng of recent partner additions made by the acquisitive Paul Hastings. High value M&A deals are among the most lucrative and prestigious practice for Big Law firms.

Growing its share of big-ticket public M&A is “primary” to Paul Hastings’ strategy, said Chair Frank Lopez. Schiele is “one of the top practitioners in public M&A of his generation,” Lopez said, and will be “instrumental” in reaching a goal to record 200 deals a year that average $1 billion or more in value.

The elite tier of large-cap public company M&A advisory is arguably the toughest to break into of any practice group, Lopez said. Kirkland is a rare example of a firm that’s vaulted into those ranks, long dominated by only a handful of competitors.

“There is not a huge population that’s going to enable you to gain the reputational credibility to get in the boardrooms that are that are making the decisions,” Lopez said in an interview. “From the business of law perspective, there’s no practice that correlates more with the most profitable firms in the world than top-of-the-market, large cap public M&A.”

Eric Schiele

Firm handout

Schiele, who primarily advises on public company deals, will serve as global co-chair of M&A at Paul Hastings. He will work alongside Eduardo Gallardo, who joined the firm in 2022 from Gibson Dunn & Crutcher.

Paul Hastings hired 215 lawyers last year, according to data from Firm Prospects, which tracks law firm moves. Only Kirkland bested that figure among the 50 largest law firms by revenue.

Paul Hastings, like virtually every law firm, is significantly smaller than Kirkland. But its recent growth surge rivals most any firm over the past four years. Its profitability over that period by one metric has jumped by 80%, while its revenue climbed 70% to a record $2.2 billion in fiscal 2024. The firm’s public company client list grew to 85 last year, up 57% from 54 a year earlier.

The firm is “on the precipice” of breaking into the “elite” group of major M&A law firm advisers, Schiele said in an interview.

“It’s going to take a lot of work and effort but I think it’s almost an inevitability that we’d get to that point,” Schiele said. “It’s a tough practice to really break into the elites of but the strategy has been good, the investments have been smart, and Paul Hastings is perfectly capable of doing it and will do it.”

Schiele joined Kirkland in 2018 from Cravath Swaine & Moore in a move that was then seen as bolstering Kirkland’s bona fides as a major New York deals firm. Kirkland now annually vies for the top spot among M&A law firms by value, earning the No. 1 ranking in 2024 by working on $427 billion worth of deals.

Schiele led Kirkland’s team on the largest M&A deal of 2024, the Kellanova sale to Mars. He was part of the Kirkland team that advised packaging maker Amcor Plc in its $8.4 billion planned combination with Berry Global Group Inc., which was announced in November.

Schiele’s “expectation and belief” is he can step into Paul Hastings and handle those types of megadeals for public companies immediately, he said, pointing to a strong group of practices that support M&A matters.

“The focus on public companies or public companies-to-be has been a strategic priority of Frank’s across a number of practice areas, and M&A fits right in the middle of that strategy,” he said.

Lopez and Schiele discussed the firm’s strategy on a patio at Paul Hastings’ New York office in Midtown, Schiele said. He was impressed by Lopez’s “bold” lateral hires and vision to build the firm.

“Paul Hastings has consistently converted that into revenue per lawyer growth and profit growth,” Schiele said. “That’s not the easiest thing to do. His track record of integrating laterals in strategic spots has been pretty extraordinary.”

Kirkland’s success in the private equity and deals markets helped it become the largest law firm by revenue and among the most profitable. It posted a record $7.2 billion in revenue in 2023, according to The American Lawyer.

Much attention was paid last year to elite New York firms raising their pay scales to $20 million or more for top partners, but some Kirkland partners passed that threshold as early as 2021.

Still, Kirkland hasn’t been immune to high-profile departures. Paul Weiss lured a 13-partner team from the firm, including London rainmakers Neel Sachdev and Roger Johnson, in late 2023 and later poached additional lawyers.

Schiele called Kirkland a “phenomenal” firm. He said he’s excited to help Paul Hastings build in an earlier stage of the M&A group’s life cycle.

“That level of success and what we’ve achieved at Kirkland is exactly the kind of success we want to have at Paul Hastings,” he said.