Welcome to Private Equity International’s ranking of the private equity industry’s top law firms by number of closed funds advised on and total capital of underlying vehicles.
METHODOLOGY
The 2025 PEI Fund Formation League Table covers blind pool private equity funds and continuation funds that had a final close date between 1 October 2023 and 30 September 2024 that have been tracked by PEI data.
Feeder funds, co-investment vehicles, SMAs and open-ended funds are not included in the league table. Only lead counsels for the funds were included in the ranking for aggregate value.
Only the master fund vehicle was accepted. The following vehicle types were not accepted:
- Feeder funds
- Co-investments
- SMAs
We also did not accept:
- Hedge funds
- CLOs
- BDCs
- REITs
- Joint Ventures
- SPVs
- Open-ended funds
Both the number of funds, and the total aggregate value of the funds advised, were used to inform law firms’ positions on the league tables.
- Number of funds: both lead counsel law firms and supporting firms get credit for funds advised.
- Total aggregate value of funds: only lead counsel get credit for the full value of the fund.
All funds were verified with information we held in PEI Group’s proprietary database.
If we needed to verify further information, we conducted secondary research to identify fund details, alongside verifying with the firm. We did not contact GPs asking about confidential funds, and only relied on public information.
We sought to ‘trust but verify’ fund formation information submitted by law firms corroborating with reference to websites, press releases and other disclosures. Given the commercial sensitivity of some fund formation deals, some details simply could not be verified by us. In such cases – we deferred to the honour system.
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