Linklaters Hires Veteran Public Law and Regulatory Partner from Weil in Paris, Rebuilding French Practice After Recent Departures
Linklaters Paris has hired a senior public law and regulatory partner from Weil, Gotshal & Manges, bringing across a three-lawyer team in a move described as quickly making up for a partner departure to Jones Day earlier in the same week. The hire follows a separate earlier blow to Weil's French public law capability: just three months before this move, Weil lost the head of its French public law and government affairs practice to Bredin Prat, a leading independent French firm. The cumulative departures represent a significant depletion of Weil's French regulatory and public law bench. The named incoming partner is Marc Lordonnois, who joins Linklaters Paris with two additional lawyers from the Weil team. Public law and regulatory practices in Paris cover matters including administrative law challenges to regulatory decisions, government affairs, and EU regulatory proceedings — work that has grown in strategic importance as EU regulatory activity has intensified across financial services, technology, and energy sectors. For Linklaters, the hire strengthens a practice area directly relevant to its cross-border EU regulatory advisory work, at a moment when the Paris office's positioning in French public law had been challenged by the Jones Day departure.
Why this matters
Lateral hiring at the partner level in French public law reflects the intensifying competition for regulatory expertise as EU regulatory activity expands across tech, financial services, and energy. For Magic Circle firms with Paris offices, French public law capability is increasingly essential to advising on EU-level regulatory challenges — including competition appeals, state aid proceedings, and administrative review of regulatory decisions. The three-lawyer team move from Weil to Linklaters is commercially significant because it shifts a practice group's institutional relationships and client relationships in a single transaction. Weil's two consecutive losses in this practice area may force a strategic rethink of its French regulatory offering.
On the Ground
A trainee supporting an international lateral hire would assist with cross-border legal opinion coordination — gathering confirmation of the incoming lawyers' good standing from relevant bars — and prepare local counsel instruction letters for any matters requiring sign-off under French professional rules before the partners can begin practising at the new firm.
Interview prep
Soundbite
Back-to-back partner losses strip Weil's French public law bench at exactly the moment EU regulatory complexity is accelerating advisory demand.
Question you might get
“Why is French public law expertise increasingly valuable to a Magic Circle firm like Linklaters, and how does it connect to the firm's broader EU regulatory practice?”
Full answer
Linklaters has hired a three-lawyer public law and regulatory team led by partner Marc Lordonnois from Weil in Paris, the latest in a series of moves that has significantly weakened Weil's French regulatory practice. Weil had already lost the head of its French public law and government affairs team to Bredin Prat three months earlier. For Linklaters, the hire reinforces its Paris office's capacity to advise on EU regulatory matters — an area of growing strategic importance as EU institutions intensify enforcement across technology, financial services, and energy. The consolidation of regulatory expertise at Magic Circle firms suggests clients are willing to pay premium rates for integrated cross-border regulatory coverage, which sustains investment in these practices.
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