- Middle East
- Practice trends
- Riyadh
Kirkland & Ellis's Riyadh managing partner Kamran Bajwa does not expect "major new work" in Saudi Arabia until tension in the Middle East eases, according to Law.com. The firm remains bullish on the Kingdom even as its Riyadh bench gets smaller.
The comment comes from a firm that opened early and hired quickly. It arrives as Saudi expansion has moved ahead of the deal flow it was meant to capture.
Kirkland opened Riyadh in 2023 as its only Middle East office
Kirkland opened its Riyadh office on 30 October 2023 under a Saudi Ministry of Justice foreign law licence. That brought the firm's global office count to 20 and gave it its only Middle East base, according to Bloomberg Law. The office opened with lateral hires, including corporate partner Noor Al-Fawzan from Latham & Watkins and Manal Al-Musharaf from White & Case. Bajwa led the office. He has headed Kirkland's regional practice since 2011, after eight years in the UAE and Egypt and a stint as chief legal officer at a MENA investment bank.
By May 2024, Kirkland was describing the GCC market as "maturing." Bajwa called the Gulf, and Saudi Arabia in particular, an "even more advanced and mature market" than a decade earlier. The firm was building construction and transactional work in the Kingdom, per Kirkland & Ellis.
Nearly 50 firms entered Saudi Arabia after the 2024 headquarters rule
Nearly 50 multinational law firms launched or expanded in Saudi Arabia over the past two years. The surge peaked in 2023, when Kirkland and Gibson Dunn opened in Riyadh, Bloomberg Law reported. Regulation drove much of the activity. From 1 January 2024, Saudi government bodies may not award contracts above SAR 1 million to firms without a Regional Headquarters in the Kingdom, per Envoy Global.
The entrants kept coming. Latham & Watkins received a Regional Headquarters licence in February 2025. Its Riyadh RHQ is led by MENA managing partner Salman Al-Sudairi, according to Latham & Watkins. Morgan Lewis opened a Riyadh office in November 2025 with six practitioners. King & Spalding established its Riyadh presence in 2025 by combining with Saudi firm Abdulaziz H. Al Fahad & Partners. Bird & Bird opened in 2025 under Middle East head of region Anders Nilsson, with resident partners Raya Alkhatib, Nick O'Connell and Simon Shooter.
Oil decline and a $67 billion deficit projection weigh on Saudi deal flow
The work has not kept pace with the offices. Falling oil prices have cast a "gloomy cloud" over Middle East deals. Goldman Sachs projected that Saudi Arabia's budget deficit could reach $67 billion this year, Bloomberg Law reported. Middle East M&A fell in the first quarter of 2026 to 196 deals from 207 a year earlier. Deal value dropped from $31.3 billion to $23.3 billion, per Consultancy-me.
Saudi Arabia held up better than the region, with 24 M&A deals worth $689 million in the first quarter, a 4% rise in volume, according to Arab News. The leading mandates are also becoming more concentrated. Bloomberg Law reported that Freshfields topped the first-quarter Middle East deal rankings with $52 billion advised. Corporate, M&A and capital markets work, the practices the Riyadh offices were built to capture, is thinner and more concentrated than the current headcount chasing it.
Local-majority staffing makes Saudi-qualified lawyers the constraint
Saudi rules require international firm offices to keep a majority of local lawyers. That makes the limited supply of Saudi-qualified talent the main hiring constraint, Bloomberg Law reported. Lateral activity has stayed brisk even as deal flow slows. Latham hired M&A partner Leen Zaza from Saudi independent firm Khoshaim & Associates into its roughly 20-lawyer Riyadh team in 2025, per Global Legal Post. Gibson Dunn hired a Latham capital markets partner in August 2025 to strengthen its Saudi capital markets presence, according to Law.com.
A Riyadh managing partner signalling a pause in major new work, from inside a firm that opened early and hired across the market, is speaking as nearly 50 firms compete for a deal pool narrowed by falling oil prices and weaker regional M&A. The staffing rules keep competition for Saudi-qualified lawyers high regardless of deal volume.
