Davis Polk & Wardwell

Davis Polk is a New York-headquartered global law firm. Its London presence is small in scale, but punchy (and profitable!) in output. Based around high-value M&A work and lender-side finance, the firm’s London office has some of the most impressive per lawyer metrics in the City. With a head-office sanctioned growth push now underway, the firm is now looking to keep efficiency high whilst scale increases. The core of Davis Polk’s London success has been its transactional work in high deal-value areas. In particular, it has found success in big-ticket M&A as well as in lender-side finance. Regarding the first of these sub-categories, the firm’s Europe lead Will Pearce has cultivated an impressive practice including recent work for Barratt Development in its a £2.2 billion acquisition of Redrow. Regarding the second, the firm has developed a reputation for facilitating the funding of large scale investments, particularly in the private capital space. Recent addition Luke McDougall adds a leveraged finance dimension to this already well-established offering. The result is a synergistic transactional expertise which can build on the firm’s stellar US reputation to land top-tier multi-national clientele, even without a massive London footprint. It is this particular practice area expertise which has allowed Davis Polk to develop its other distinguishing characteristic: its phenomenal efficiency. Its team of 11 partners and circa 50 associates consistently rank at the very top of City-wide metrics on this point. This is particularly true in terms of its aforementioned corporate practice, which led the City across several modes of evaluation. First, it was first in revenue per partner, coming in at a massive £12.6 million. This was complemented by an equally stand-out £3.3 million revenue per lawyer. Contributing to both of these numbers was the firm’s market-leading average deal value of $2.8 billion. In addition to sky high revenues, the firm has pursued the other side of the efficiency equation through keeping cost fairly low. Prior to May of 2024, the firm had not spent on lateral hires in London for over a decade. Instead, they preferred to promote from within, or move lawyers across from their New York base. This mixed strategy is reflected by the roughly equal split of jurisdictional qualification in the partnership. Things may be changing on this front, however. Davis Polk’s global management have identified the London market as a growth area, with opportunity to add partners with established client followings within the firm’s existing practice specialisms. As such, the firm has made four lateral partner acquisitions in the past 8 months, including the aforementioned McDougall. This is not to say, however, that the firm will suddenly turn into a large, full-service outfit. The concentration of the new hires in private capital funding work suggests a strategic move, rather than all-out-warfare. That said, Davis Polk offers an intriguing mix of lean, profit-driven excellence with a recent move towards expansion.