Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz and Kirkland & Ellis have topped North America’s M&A rankings for legal advisers in 2025, based on data from GlobalData’s latest legal advisers league table.

GlobalData’s Financial Deals Database indicate that Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz led the chart in terms of total deal value, with advisory on transactions worth a total of $669.6bn.

Kirkland & Ellis led by deal volume, advising on a total of 474 transactions.

GlobalData lead analyst Aurojyoti Bose said: “Kirkland & Ellis, which was the top adviser by both value and volume in 2024, managed to retain its leadership position by volume in 2025 but lost the top spot by value to Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. Kirkland & Ellis held the third position in 2025 deal value rankings.

“Despite advising on relatively much lesser number of deals, Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz managed to lead the chart by value due to its involvement in big-ticket deals. During 2025, the company advised on 45 billion-dollar deals that also included 15 mega deals valued more than $10bn.”

In the value rankings, Latham & Watkins took the second spot with $605.2bn in advised deals.

Kirkland & Ellis followed at $585.1bn, while Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom and Sullivan & Cromwell reported $475.1bn and $438.4bn respectively.

In terms of deal volume, Latham & Watkins ranked second with advisory provided on 337 deals.

Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher came third with 170 deals, followed by Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison with 169 transactions and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom with 140.

GlobalData’s league tables are based on the real-time tracking of thousands of company websites, advisory firm websites and other reliable sources available on the secondary domain. A dedicated team of analysts monitors all these sources to gather in-depth details for each deal, including adviser names. 

To ensure further robustness to the data, the company also seeks submissions of deals from leading advisers.