Between the second half of 2024 and this summer, the mix of work law firms put out in deal announcements moved in one clear direction. M&A fell about four points as a share of everything announced. Capital markets rose about five. Debt capital markets rose two. Restructuring and fund formation roughly halved.
This is drawn from the 3,034 deal announcements published on Legal Desire across two comparable windows, all of them coded field by field into DealDatabase: 1,758 announcements from July to December 2024, and 1,276 from June to September 2026.
What this measures, and what it does not
It measures published deal announcements, not market activity. A deal that never gets announced never appears here, and firms without a press team are under-represented. Our monthly volume also reflects our own publishing cadence rather than the market’s, which is why the comparison below is share of announcements rather than raw counts, and why the two windows were chosen as periods of steady publishing rather than as neat calendar halves.
Every field is either stated in the announcement or marked not stated. Nothing is inferred.
Practice mix, share of all announcements
| Practice | Jul-Dec 2024 | Jun-Sep 2026 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| M&A | 36.5% | 32.4% | -4.1 |
| Capital markets and IPO | 14.9% | 19.7% | +4.8 |
| Debt capital markets | 9.3% | 11.2% | +1.9 |
| Private equity and buyouts | 8.8% | 7.4% | -1.4 |
| Banking and finance | 8.4% | 8.6% | +0.2 |
| Venture capital and growth | 5.9% | 7.1% | +1.2 |
| Real estate | 4.2% | 3.1% | -1.1 |
| Project finance | 2.7% | 3.9% | +1.2 |
| Joint ventures | 3.5% | 3.1% | -0.4 |
| Energy and infrastructure | 2.0% | 1.3% | -0.7 |
| Fund formation | 1.9% | 0.9% | -1.0 |
| Restructuring and insolvency | 1.3% | 0.7% | -0.6 |
The two largest movements are the ones worth arguing about. M&A remains the single biggest category by a distance, and it lost 4.1 points of share. Equity capital markets gained 4.8. Add debt capital markets and the combined capital markets share went from 24.2 per cent of announcements to 30.9.
Underneath that, four categories that were already small got noticeably smaller as a share: fund formation, restructuring and insolvency, energy and infrastructure, and real estate. Project finance and venture capital went the other way.
Sector mix
| Sector | Jul-Dec 2024 | Jun-Sep 2026 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Energy | 20.1% | 20.9% | +0.8 |
| Financial services | 15.3% | 14.1% | -1.2 |
| Technology | 12.8% | 14.9% | +2.1 |
| Healthcare and life sciences | 8.9% | 9.2% | +0.3 |
| Real estate | 8.5% | 7.4% | -1.1 |
| Consumer and retail | 5.5% | 5.1% | -0.4 |
| Industrials | 4.9% | 4.7% | -0.2 |
| Telecoms and media | 2.1% | 1.3% | -0.8 |
| Hospitality and leisure | 2.3% | 1.4% | -0.9 |
| Infrastructure | 2.0% | 1.4% | -0.6 |
Energy stayed almost exactly where it was, at about a fifth of everything announced. Technology gained two points. Telecoms and media, hospitality and leisure, and infrastructure each lost around a third of their share, from a small base.
The same shift inside individual firms
Firms with enough announcements in both windows to compare. Capital markets here means equity and debt capital markets combined.
| Firm | Announcements 2024 | M&A share | Capital markets share | Announcements 2026 | M&A share | Capital markets share |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Latham & Watkins | 353 | 37% | 31% | 447 | 30% | 33% |
| Clifford Chance | 244 | 32% | 33% | 188 | 26% | 40% |
| Linklaters | 136 | 27% | 34% | 118 | 24% | 53% |
| DLA Piper | 134 | 34% | 19% | 92 | 29% | 28% |
| Dentons | 72 | 40% | 21% | 74 | 32% | 20% |
| Baker McKenzie | 66 | 56% | 17% | 70 | 54% | 14% |
Linklaters is the clearest case: capital markets went from about a third of its announced work to more than half, while M&A slipped three points. Clifford Chance moved the same way, seven points into capital markets. Latham & Watkins announced more work overall than any other firm in both windows and shifted seven points out of M&A. Baker McKenzie barely moved, which is its own kind of signal.
Announcements themselves got more detailed
Three things changed in how firms write these releases:
- Announcements that disclose a deal value rose from 55.6 per cent to 63.1 per cent.
- The median disclosed value, taking US dollar deals only, went from US$515m to US$578m. The upper quartile went from US$1.2bn to US$1.5bn.
- The average number of named lawyers per announcement rose from 9.3 to 10.5.
Firms are naming more people and putting more numbers on the record. If your releases still name two partners and no value, you are now the outlier, and you are handing the league tables and the AI summaries less to work with than your competitors are.
What to do with this
If you sit in a shrinking category, check whether it is your practice or your publishing. Restructuring work did not disappear. Restructuring announcements did. Those are two different problems with two different fixes.
If you sit in capital markets, the field got more crowded. Nearly a third of everything announced is now capital markets work. Being announced is no longer differentiation on its own; the detail is.
Put the value and the full team in every release. It costs nothing, and the gap between firms that do and firms that do not is now measurable.
The underlying records, with the firms, lawyers and disclosed values on every deal, are searchable at DealDatabase.co. If your firm’s announcements are not on it, you can submit them through the Legal Desire Press Desk.
Method: deal announcements published on legaldesire.com and coded into DealDatabase. Windows: 1 July to 31 December 2024 (1,758 announcements) and 1 June to 30 September 2026 (1,276). Practice and sector are taken from the language of the announcement. Percentages are share of announcements in the window. Firm-level figures count every announcement naming that firm in any adviser role.
Where the legal industry reads first.
Enjoyed this article? Get the biggest legal industry updates, deals, appointments, insights and expert interviews in your inbox, free.
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.From Legal Desire
Is your firm the one being cited, or the one being skipped?
We ran the test. On several everyday legal questions, software companies are answering and law firms are not. We help firms fix that, and we build the technology behind the practice.
