Overview
- The firm’s management committee has recommended an orderly global wind-down and a formal partnership vote to approve the decision is expected imminently.
- Weil has retained Davis Polk for restructuring counsel and has begun interviewing financial advisers while exploring options such as dissolution, a last-minute merger, or a smaller standalone firm.
- Rival firms including Sullivan & Cromwell, Paul Weiss, DLA Piper, Simpson Thacher, and Latham & Watkins are actively speaking with Weil associates, trainees and some partners about hiring opportunities.
- Partners have started informing clients that Weil cannot continue after more than 30 partners left the firm this year and merger talks aimed at stabilizing the business collapsed last week.
- The collapse highlights how a white-hot market for lateral partners, large guaranteed pay packages, and profit concentration at competing firms have made big partnerships vulnerable to rapid talent loss and wider disruption in Big Law.