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A 3 November analysis in The American Lawyer argues that Weil, Gotshal & Manges entered 2026 with little obvious sign of financial decline, and that its reported numbers showed only part of what was happening inside the firm.
Weil's revenue rose 64% to $2.08bn as profit topped $1bn
The analysis notes that revenue rose 64% over the decade to $2.08 billion and net income more than doubled to $1 billion. Partner movement, the makeup of the lawyer base and billed-hour trends pointed in the opposite direction.
On 28 October, the management committee recommended an orderly wind-down of the roughly 1,200-lawyer firm, with a partner vote due within days, after merger talks with Willkie Farr & Gallagher collapsed, per CNBC. Following a review of strategic alternatives, the committee recommended that the partnership pursue an orderly wind-down, according to Law.com International. A timeline in Original Jurisdiction records that incoming executive partner Ramona Nee privately declined the role in August, M&A chair Michael Aiello left in September, and leadership recommended the wind-down on 28 and 29 October. The firm unraveled in three to four weeks, compared with the months Dewey & LeBoeuf took in 2012.
Cravath, Paul Weiss, Skadden and Simpson Thacher hired departing partners
Cravath hired Aiello and five transactional partners in September. The group was said to represent roughly $100m to $150m, or 5 to 7 percent, of Weil's revenue, per Original Jurisdiction. Paul Weiss hired New York-based global private equity co-head Doug Warner, who had been at Weil since 1986, on 27 October, along with PE partner Christopher Machera, according to The American Lawyer. Skadden hired regulatory specialists Andrew Dean and Christopher Mulligan, both former SEC officials, that same day. Simpson Thacher hired London private equity partner Lewis Blakey, Bloomberg reported on 30 October: Bloomberg.
Warner was described as at least the 14th Weil leader to leave since the start of 2026. Others named include Brian Parness, Michael Hickey, Lyuba Goltser, Andrew Tulumello, Chantale Fiebig and Caroline Zalka. Co-managing partner Ramona Nee was also reported to be in discussions to join Simpson Thacher, per Semafor.
Weil's $5.59m profit per partner trailed Kirkland's $11.12m
Weil's FY2025 profits per equity partner of about $5.59m were below those at the firms now hiring its partners: roughly $11.12m at Kirkland & Ellis, $9.80m at Davis Polk and more than $8.5m at Paul Weiss and Simpson Thacher, per Business Model Analyst. Weil ended its modified lockstep system and added a non-equity partner tier in 2024, shifting compensation toward expanding client relationships, according to PYMNTS.
The same analysis argued that when one partner controls nine figures of annual revenue, a pay structure that cannot retain him becomes "load-bearing" in a way it was not when books were smaller and more spread out.
M&A, private equity and SEC regulatory work drove the departures
The main losses were in the firm's transactional practice. Aiello chaired the corporate department and Warner co-headed global private equity, per The American Lawyer. London private equity saw concentrated departures, with a wave of UK PE partners leaving through October, according to Bloomberg. SEC and financial-regulatory work also moved, with Dean and Mulligan leaving for Skadden after fewer than three years.
These are the practices large US firms compete hardest for. Deal volumes have been slowing, with M&A, private equity and capital-markets work under strain and PE exits delayed by holding periods above five years, per JD Journal. Weil, long a restructuring power that advised on the Lehman Brothers, General Motors and Enron bankruptcies, engaged Davis Polk restructuring partner Brian Resnick and AlixPartners for its own wind-down after earlier merger talks with Vinson & Elkins also failed.
Weil had fallen from ninth among global deal advisers in 2022 to outside the top 25. It had not reinvested post-2008 profits and had cut lawyers while rivals grew, per KFGO. Its roughly 2,000 employees were told that pay would continue for 90 days, along with year-end 2026 bonuses. An AI-driven legal startup, Scissero, moved to seek Weil lawyers and assets during the wind-down, as reported by Artificial Lawyer. The sequence puts the $2.08bn revenue and $1bn profit figures alongside a compensation and concentration structure that a billion-dollar profit did not protect, a pairing Thomson Reuters framed as a case study in how surface metrics can hide structural fragility.
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