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Law firm Paul Weiss has poached Sean Wheeler, one of rival Kirkland & Ellis’s leading energy partners, in the latest high-profile strike by the New York firm as the war for legal dealmakers escalates.
Paul Weiss, which has advised many of the biggest names in corporate America, including Chevron, Kraft Heinz and IBM, has been aggressively expanding its mergers and acquisitions team under corporate development chair Scott Barshay, who himself joined from Cravath in 2016.
Wheeler, who will assume the role of co-chair of global M&A, will open a new Houston office for Paul Weiss as the firm looks to bolster its position in the oil and gas industry. Wheeler will join as a partner alongside Debbie Yee, another Kirkland lawyer.
The pair of hires comes after a bumper 2025 for Paul Weiss, in which the firm advised on nearly $400bn worth of M&A deals worldwide, putting it among the top-10 M&A law firms globally, according to LSEG data. Paul Weiss ranked sixth for total deal volumes in the US while Kirkland was number one.
Since the arrival of Barshay, Paul Weiss has invested heavily in assembling an all-star team of rainmakers, including hiring Jim Langston from Cleary Gottlieb and Krishna Veeraraghavan from Sullivan & Cromwell. Paul Weiss also nabbed leading debt financing partners Neel Sachdev and Eric Wedel from Kirkland in 2023 to build out its London and Los Angeles offices, respectively.
The scramble to generate fees from advising some of the biggest US companies and private equity groups has sparked a huge talent war among law firms, with some lawyers commanding pay packages in excess of $20mn a year.
Barshay said in a statement that Wheeler was “the ideal leader to spearhead our expansion into Houston”. Brad Karp, Paul Weiss chair, added that “Houston is a booming business epicentre that is home to many of our clients”.
With a surge in power and utility deals to fuel the AI-driven data centre boom set to continue and a lull in oil and gas deals expected to come to an end, this year is set to be a busy stretch for Houston dealmakers. Coterra Energy and Devon Energy on Monday merged to form a $58bn shale drilling giant, the biggest oil and gas deal in years.
Wheeler, who joined Kirkland in 2018 after stints at Latham & Watkins and Baker Botts, has advised on some of the energy sector’s biggest deals, including Marathon Oil’s $22.5bn all-stock sale to ConocoPhillips in 2023. Yee advised data centre operator CyrusOne on its $15bn sale to KKR and GIP in 2022.
Paul Weiss already has a large foothold in the energy industry, advising on deals including Chevron’s $55bn takeover of Hess Corporation and Endeavor Energy Resources’ $26bn sale to Diamondback Energy. In recent years, Kirkland and Latham have emerged as dominant law firms advising Houston-based clients.
