Weil Gotshal partners vote to dissolve as rivals carve up its teams

Weil, Gotshal & Manges, one of the best-known names on Wall Street's legal map, is formally shutting down. Partners voted on Tuesday to dissolve the firm, Law.com reported, with 97% of the remaining partnership in favor, according to a source familiar with the matter. The result fell slightly short of unanimous, but it settles the question that has hung over the firm since its leaders recommended an orderly wind-down last month.

The vote matters now because it turns a slow-motion exodus into a liquidation. The same ballot approved a three-person dissolution committee and two co-chief restructuring officers to run the process, Law.com reported. Barry Wolf, the executive chair who led Weil for years, will serve as a special consultant as the firm winds down operations rather than as the person in charge of it.

What is left to divide is shrinking by the week. Weil has lost a large number of partners to rivals over recent months, Legal Business noted when it reported the firmwide vote, which closed earlier on Tuesday. The departures have looked less like individual laterals than wholesale transfers of practice groups. Gibson Dunn is bringing on roughly 120 Weil funds lawyers in New York and London, including about 20 partners, Above the Law reported. Kirkland & Ellis confirmed it is taking 40 lawyers led by Ramona Nee, the partner who was supposed to take over Weil in January. Latham picked up six.

The biggest prize may be the group that built Weil's reputation. Matt Barr, Weil's global chair of restructuring, is in advanced talks to join Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom along with a number of bankruptcy attorneys from the firm, Law.com reported, citing sources. The publication described the restructuring group as one of the last high-performing teams at Weil that rivals had not yet plucked. If that team leaves, the firm famous for steering companies through Chapter 11 will be steering its own wind-down without its best-known bankruptcy bench.

The carve-up is happening abroad too. Legal Business has reported that Sidley is in talks to take Weil's Paris office alongside private equity partners in London and Germany, and that Weil set up a rescue plan it called Project Dunkirk to support business services staff in London.

For associates, the picture is less comfortable. Above the Law contrasted the message to partners, which freed them to seek their fortune elsewhere, with a memo to associates that promised to "facilitate introductions where we can" before telling everyone to keep billing. Its reporting pointed to at least one practice group that looks set to exit as a team without its first-year associates, and noted that a new class of lawyers started at the firm only last month. The site also cited an anonymous Weil associate who told Bloomberg Law News that firm leaders had negotiated deals with other firms while often leaving associates behind.

The dissolution also lands on Manhattan's office market. Weil has been the largest tenant in the General Motors Building on Fifth Avenue since the tower opened in 1968, leasing 447,075 square feet through August 2034, as we reported on Monday. The space houses 584 professionals, and the building's $2.3 billion loan matures in June 2027, which means lenders and landlord BXP now need an answer on that space well before the debt comes due.

The committee's work will decide how much value survives. A wind-down of this size involves collecting money clients still owe, settling with landlords and sorting out obligations to departing partners and staff, and every team that leaves before the process is complete takes client relationships with it. Tuesday's vote does not stop that drift. It formalizes it, and it puts a fixed structure around the end of a firm that, until this fall, few in Big Law expected to fail.

For more coverage of the firms and courts shaping business, see our Law Sector.