In this episode of “First One,” the (fairly irregular) podcast companion to the “One First” newsletter, Steve sat down with Karen Vladeck (a lawyer-turned-legal recruiter and the founder and managing director of Risepoint Search Partners, which moves partners and associates between firms) and Jonah Perlin (Steve’s Georgetown Law colleague, the host of the How I Lawyer podcast, and a close watcher of the legal market). Together, they explain the sudden collapse of Weil, Gotshal & Manges. A law firm’s collapse may seem like an odd subject for a “One First” podcast, but it affects the whole legal community—and has lessons that may well be relevant to non-lawyers, as well.
The conversation opens with how fast it all happened. As Karen notes, Risepoint had placed two lawyers at Weil in the 90 days before the collapse, and another candidate received a Weil offer just two weeks before it. Jonah had a former student due to start there within weeks, and some lawyers started the very week the firm fell. Jonah also makes the case that this “overnight” collapse was decades in the making. Since 2008, Weil’s profits per partner had grown at about half the rate of its competitors’.
From there, the episode traces Weil’s history. Three Jewish lawyers founded the firm in 1931, when many Jews couldn’t practice at the white-shoe Wall Street firms, and it became an elite New York institution. Marty Ginsburg led its tax group for many years, and the firm later expanded to Washington and then abroad. Its signature practice was, ironically, restructuring and bankruptcy. Weil represented the debtors in six of the ten largest U.S. bankruptcies, including Enron, GM, and Lehman Brothers. The firm ranked 29th on the 2025 AmLaw 100, with roughly $2 billion in revenue and about 1,200 lawyers. No firm of that size has collapsed since the rankings began.
Next, the episode looks at how BigLaw itself has changed. Steve notes that lawyers and whole practice groups now move between elite firms far more often than they did 20 years ago. Jonah compares this to NIL and the transfer portal in college sports, with one big difference. When law firm “players” leave, the “fans,” meaning the clients, go with them. Karen adds some nuance. Some firms still have institutional clients who stay no matter who leaves. And homegrown firms like Wachtell, Susman Godfrey, and Kellogg Hansen have thrived with little or no lateral hiring. In her view, Weil’s problem wasn’t slow lateral hiring as such. The problem was that its main competitors, including Kirkland, Davis Polk, and Cravath, were hiring laterals heavily.
The heart of the episode walks through what press reports say happened, with the caveat that none of us were in the room. Jonah frames it as a run on the bank in three steps. First, in September, a longtime corporate partner who reportedly ran the corporate group as his “fiefdom” left for Cravath with a team. Second, reported merger talks with Willkie Farr went nowhere. Third, the longtime chairman’s chosen successor reportedly decided she didn’t want the job, which Jonah calls the straw that broke the camel’s back. Karen points out how puzzling the timing was. Partners were still arriving, including one who started the Monday before the collapse, and to many people the moves looked like normal turnover. Building on Matt Levine’s “Money Stuff” column (Steve can’t resist pointing out that Matt was a law school classmate), the guests discuss how shifting perceptions can drive a run even when the money is still there.
That leads to one of the episode’s central points: Weil isn’t Dewey. Dewey had made risky bets and was insolvent. Weil isn’t. It’s paying its employees for 90 days and offering stay bonuses through January 15 to wind down client work. So why did Weil wind down when other firms survive similar comings and goings? Jonah points to its long lag in profits per partner, which makes it harder to attract and keep top talent. Karen points to governance. Two people reportedly dominated the executive committee, and one of them had left. Ordinary partners didn’t have enough information, and they learned of the wind-down only after the executive committee had already voted. Her warning to firm leaders is blunt. If a tiny group runs a big firm, even a $2 billion firm can fail when that group cracks.
Steve then raises a question closer to the usual subject matter of “One First”: Firms have faced threats from the government and some have given in. Could Weil’s collapse leave other firms even easier to intimidate? Jonah argues they were already in that position. When firms are just loose collections of lawyers with their own books of business, they go into “save yourself” mode, and that shaped how some responded to the executive orders. He points to John Morley’s work on how law firms die, which he says plays out the Weil story almost exactly.
The episode then turns to the lessons to be learned from Weil’s collapse. Karen argues for real succession planning. She notes reports that the longtime chairman had hit the firm’s mandatory retirement age of 68, and she urges term limits for leaders, younger voices, and broader representation on executive committees. Jonah warns that if every partner becomes a free agent, the model that let BigLaw grow faster than almost any other industry can’t survive. He predicts a “barbell” market. At one end are mega-merged firms that provide back-office support while partners “eat what they kill.” At the other end are smaller firms. His advice to law students is a reversal of what he used to say: pick people, practice groups, and the ability to bring clients with you, not firm names.
The episode also covers what’s happening to Weil’s lawyers now. Karen says she has never seen other firms scramble like this for talent. Gibson Dunn has reportedly taken about 100 finance lawyers, Davis Polk is reportedly taking a large litigation group, and the would-be successor is rumored to be in talks with Kirkland. Many partners are getting raises. Mid-level associates are seeing signing bonuses and guaranteed bonuses not seen since 2021, and one candidate got an offer within about 12 hours. Karen’s biggest concern is for incoming first-years and roughly 100 future summer associates. She offers them encouragement through the story of a friend who didn’t get a Weil offer in 2008 and went on to build a thriving bankruptcy practice.
Jonah gets the last word on the bigger picture. For Weil’s own lawyers, he thinks the collapse may not be a big deal overall. Andrew Granato’s 2023 study found that former Dewey associates made partner at about the same rate as associates from other firms. For the industry, though, he calls it “massive.” He rejects claims that AI caused the collapse, but sees AI as one of several forces reshaping legal practice. If a behemoth like Weil wasn’t too big to fail, any firm that loses its lawyers’ confidence could fail. His closing thought is that firms must build better structures, training, and retention rather than lean on their founders’ legacy. And he suspects many firms, like Weil, would rather “die prestigious” than survive below the AmLaw 100.
We hope you find this episode of “First One” interesting, and we (especially Steve) would welcome ideas for topics to explore (and guests to explore them with) in future episodes.
If you’re not already a subscriber to “One First,” please consider becoming one:
Either way, we’ll be back Thursday with our regular “bonus” issue—this one celebrating the fourth(!) anniversary of this whole enterprise, which officially hits tomorrow (Wednesday, November 11).
Stay safe out there.
