'Everybody wants to be Kirkland': Scott Gibson on the next phase of London's talent battle

London’s partner hiring market may have cooled a little from last year’s record highs, but veteran City headhunter Scott Gibson says activity remains exceptionally strong by historical standards.

Speaking on The Non-Billable Podcast, Gibson, co-founder of recruitment consultancy Edwards Gibson, says competition for top partners remains intense - particularly in private equity, finance and other private capital-driven practices.

Edwards Gibson recorded a record number of London partner moves in 2025. But Gibson says that even stripping out last year’s exceptional activity levels, the market would still be operating close to historic highs.

He says the gap between the top US firms and the rest of the market continues to widen, with American firms still prepared to pay huge money for proven rainmakers. But he argues the narrative around the decline of the Magic Circle has been overstated.

“The Magic Circle firms are holding their own,” he says, adding that elite UK firms have become far more competitive on partner and associate pay in recent years.

One area that’s really picked up in the past year or two is corporate real estate. Gibson points to growing demand around data centres, energy and digital infrastructure projects as capital continues flooding into the sector.

“If you’re setting up a data centre, you need complex financing, you need energy, you need planning - you need everything,” he said. “Law firms have tracked, as they always do, what’s going on in the wider markets.”

According to Gibson, private equity real estate and infrastructure lawyers have become some of the hottest commodities in the London market as firms chase new areas of growth tied to the AI boom.

Why partners still chase US firms

While Magic Circle firms have become more competitive on pay, Gibson says they still face structural disadvantages against their US rivals - particularly around compensation models and cashflow.

According to Gibson, partners moving from US firms can often feel financially worse off even when headline remuneration is the same.

“You can actually move from an American law firm to a UK law firm on exactly the same amount of money and you will often feel a lot poorer because of the way UK firms distribute profits,” he says.

The conversation also explores the continued expansion of non-equity partnership tiers across the market. Gibson says elite firms have increasingly moved away from traditional lockstep models as they try to preserve profitability while paying top rainmakers more aggressively.

“Everybody wants to be Kirkland & Ellis,” he says.

Listen to the full conversation with Scott Gibson on The Non-Billable Podcast.