Wachtell's Co-Chair Defects to Gibson Dunn — and Cracks the Last Fortress of Old-Guard Big Law

In late May, over breakfast at Nougatine near Central Park, Gibson Dunn litigator Orin Snyder — who counts LeBron James, Bob Dylan, and Lady Gaga among his clients — made William Savitt an offer that would have been unthinkable just five years ago. Savitt, co-chair of Wachtell Lipton and a former clerk to the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, was offered at least $20 million a year to leave the most profitable law firm in the world for Gibson Dunn's 2,200-lawyer global platform. He said yes, and brought five partners with him — a defection that has sent shockwaves through the highest tiers of corporate law.

Wachtell's mystique rested on its near-total imperviousness to poaching. Until 2020, the firm had lost only one partner to a rival in over half a century. Now, with roughly 80 partners, it has shed some 16 since last year. When Savitt told firm leadership he was leaving, senior partners made emotional appeals — but notably did not attempt to match his compensation offer. The exodus has triggered a feeding frenzy, with rival firms aggressively recruiting remaining Wachtell lawyers who now appear newly vulnerable.

The defection crystallizes a structural transformation decades in the making. A new breed of mega-firms — Gibson Dunn, Kirkland & Ellis, Latham & Watkins, with roots in Chicago and Los Angeles rather than white-shoe Manhattan — now dominate corporate law, generating as much as $10 billion annually. They abandoned the traditional lockstep pay model, in which partner compensation tracks seniority, in favor of star-driven packages that can reach $35 million. Firms still clinging to lockstep, where the ceiling may be $7 million, simply cannot compete in the talent market. Kirkland chair Jon Ballis put it bluntly: compensating lawyers based on years since law school graduation rather than business contribution is unsustainable in a capitalist system.

Savitt had also been internally frustrated — pushing Wachtell to devote more resources to its litigation practice and create clearer paths for new leadership. The firm remains tightly controlled by a handful of senior figures, including 95-year-old founder Marty Lipton and 79-year-old dealmaker Ed Herlihy. Savitt's move came fresh off a landmark trial win for OpenAI against Elon Musk. Wachtell insists it is having a record year and leads all major league tables, but the optics of losing a co-chair without even a counteroffer are difficult to spin.

Cravath, the other pillar of the traditional model, faces its own quiet erosion. It handled nearly a quarter of major deal value in the 1990s; last year that figure had collapsed to 7%. Kirkland and Latham together now account for roughly 30% of all deal value. Cravath chair Faiza Saeed frames the divergence as a choice between factory-scale output and artisanal quality, likening her firm to Brunello Cucinelli rather than Lands' End. Whether that positioning holds long-term remains an open question, especially as at least 10 Cravath partners have also departed in the past year. The week's drama was compounded by a separate, unrelated scandal: one partner in Savitt's group who opted to stay was placed on leave after a video of him kissing a junior lawyer in Central Park went viral on TikTok — an almost surreal coda for a firm legendary for discretion.