The Inaugural Lawdragon 500 Special Situations Lawyers

We're delighted to introduce The 2026 Lawdragon 500 Leading Special Situations Lawyers.

This is the inaugural edition of this introductory guide to the swiftly emerging specialty combining bankruptcy and restructuring, finance, liability management and capital solutions for stressed and distressed companies. Included in that scenario are M&A situations in which there is hostile activity or proxy contests.

While crisis management and litigation are certainly tools in this scenario, those experts are well covered in other guides and not the heart of this one. Included, however, are those masters at transporting companies facing overwhelming liability from mass tort and other claims through bankruptcy or other reconfigurations.

Walied Soliman KC built his reputation in the room where deals get tense. As Canadian Chair of Norton Rose Fulbright, based in Toronto, he co-founded the firm's acclaimed Special Situations team and has become the lawyer boards call when an M&A situation turns adversarial, whether that means a proxy battle, a hostile bidder at the door, or a shareholder activist pushing for change. His range runs from restructurings and corporate finance to governance and structured products, and it was on full display in his multi-year defense of Parkland Corporation against Simpson Oil Limited and Engine Capital, a campaign that culminated in Parkland's $9.1B sale to Sunoco.

Jennifer E. Daly sits at the intersection of private credit and distress, a vantage point that makes her one of the busiest lawyers in the market. As Chair of the Private Credit and Special Situations practice at Paul Hastings in New York, she is lead counsel to an unusually broad client base, private credit funds, special situation and opportunistic funds, business development companies, hedge funds and major financial institutions, across leveraged buyouts, unitranche and first lien/second lien financings, mezzanine debt, DIP financings, rescues, exits and liability management transactions. She moves comfortably between performing credit and the finance side of both in-court and out-of-court workouts, and her client roster reads like a who's who of the space: Antares, Apollo, Blue Torch Capital, CVC, Blackstone Credit, KKR, Owl Rock, MSD Capital, Park Square Capital, Sound Point Capital and New Mountain Capital.

Amit Trehan has made a career of finding value where others see only losses. As Co-Head of U.S. Financial Restructuring at Freshfields in New York, he works to maximize recoveries across workouts, bankruptcies and liability management transactions, ranging fluidly across leveraged and structured finance, asset-based and bilateral lending, commercial real estate and derivatives. He served as counsel to the Administrative Agent on Radiate's $5B recapitalization, and his work advising Barclays as lender and/or agent spans some of the decade's most closely watched restructurings and financings, including Hertz, McDermott, PG&E, Windstream, Toys R Us, MattressFirm and Ultra Petroleum.

We selected this guide through our time-honed process combining your fantastic nominations, independent research and vetting with peers. Those designated with an asterisk are members of the Lawdragon Hall of Fame.