A while at Weil. Superstar partners, but who succeeds?

What Weil’s crisis, earlier law-firm failures and organisational research reveal about building an institution around exceptional people.

An institution should make exceptional people more effective together. It should connect their expertise, spread responsibility and build enough confidence in a shared future that its members continue to invest in it.

Weil, Gotshal & Manges raises a difficult question about that ambition: what happens when individually successful people no longer see a viable future together?

On 28 October 2026, Weil’s management committee recommended an orderly wind-down. Reuters’ subsequent account described a firm with around 1,200 lawyers and more than $2 billion in revenue in 2025, facing major partner departures, failed merger talks and a disrupted succession. Ramona Nee had backed away from plans to succeed Barry Wolf. As reported on 29 October, the partnership still had to vote, and the firm intended to wind down outside bankruptcy.1

Those details matter. They describe several sources of uncertainty arriving together: who will remain, who will lead, and whether the firm can offer a credible path forward.

For the people affected, the consequences are immediate and personal. For other organisations, the useful question is how such dependencies develop long before a crisis becomes visible.

A departure can change the economics of staying.

John Morley’s research on law-firm failures explains why partnerships can unravel with unusual speed. Partners are owners. When a rainmaker leaves with revenue-generating work, costs such as office commitments can remain, reducing what is available to the remaining partners. That can make their own departures more attractive. The process reinforces itself.2

Morley also distinguishes absolute profitability from profitability relative to competing firms. A partnership can still generate substantial profits while becoming a less attractive place for its partners to remain. Success measured against last year does not necessarily mean competitiveness against the next offer.2

This helps explain why a large revenue figure offers limited reassurance. A leadership team also needs to understand how that revenue depends on particular relationships, how quickly its costs can adjust, and what its members believe about the institution’s future.

That is an organisational problem with financial consequences.

There are precedents, and their differences are instructive.

Dewey & LeBoeuf’s 2012 failure illustrates the interaction between compensation, information and trust. Reuters’ investigation described substantial debt, multiyear compensation guarantees and partners discovering how much income was already committed to earlier obligations. It also reported complaints that important financial information had been withheld. The firm subsequently filed for Chapter 11 with the intention of winding down.3

The organisational lesson is about the bargain between members. A commitment made to secure one person can change the economics for everyone else. If those obligations become clear only when distributions disappoint, the resulting problem includes confidence in leadership as well as money. Dewey’s specific financial circumstances should not be assumed to exist at Weil.

Heller Ehrman offers a second comparison. The California Supreme Court’s account records financial distress in 2008, creditors declaring default and the shareholders voting to dissolve. The firm then told clients it would cease providing legal services.4

Here the relevant issue is the connection between organisational continuity and access to finance. The ability to keep operating depends on more than the quality of the professionals still inside the building. Heller’s creditor-default circumstances are distinct from Weil’s stated intention to wind down outside bankruptcy.

Stroock & Stroock & Lavan is a closer comparison in the sequence of events. It lost a large bankruptcy team to Paul Hastings in 2022. Further departures followed, merger discussions with Pillsbury ended, and a substantial group moved to Hogan Lovells. Stroock’s own announcement confirmed that its dissolution plan became effective on 17 November 2023, following the departure of 28 partners and additional lawyers to Hogan Lovells.5

The resemblance is the narrowing of organisational options: losing important groups, seeking a combination, and reaching a point where a collective future becomes harder to sustain. It does not establish identical causes or financial conditions.

Together, these cases suggest a more useful question than whether people have become less loyal. What must the organisation maintain so that staying, sharing responsibility and investing in its future remain credible choices?

Succession has to transfer authority as well as a title.

A professional partnership is a particularly demanding place to lead. Its most influential members may also control important client relationships and have attractive alternatives elsewhere. A formal appointment does not, by itself, settle how those people will work together.

Laura Empson’s research examines this problem inside an elite professional-services firm responding to a crisis. Her study found that a collective leadership structure could contain a hidden hierarchy and substantial informal power. It also showed how leaders could maintain cohesion and act decisively despite ambiguous formal authority.6

The implication for succession is practical: an organisation needs to understand where authority actually sits. Who can secure agreement across practices? Who can challenge a powerful colleague? Who can make a difficult allocation of resources and retain the confidence needed to carry it through?

Weil’s disrupted transition makes these questions relevant. The available evidence does not establish precisely why its succession failed. For other firms, however, the distinction between naming a successor and building a functioning leadership group is worth examining before a handover becomes urgent.

The issue with superstars is how the organisation arranges itself around them.

Exceptional professionals can attract clients, raise standards and create opportunities for colleagues. Their contribution deserves recognition. The risk appears when commercial importance becomes a reason to leave dependence unexamined.

The Economist describes Weil through the erosion of “elite collectivism.”7 The organisational question beneath that phrase is whether members still share meaningful obligations, information and responsibility for the future.

Elitism becomes relevant when status determines whose decisions can be questioned, whose commitments the organisation must absorb, and whose growth receives attention. A firm should be able to reward exceptional contribution while holding every influential person accountable for the strength of the institution around them.

That means examining the reward system. Does it recognise sharing client responsibility, building colleagues’ judgment and preparing successors? Can a person be celebrated for results while leaving the firm increasingly dependent on their continued presence?

Heidi Gardner’s research across law firms gives collaboration economic substance. Using financial and personnel records, supported by interviews and surveys, she found that rainmakers who involved other partners in their work subsequently grew their books of business, even after accounting for their starting business and other factors. She also identifies trust and incentives as important conditions for collaboration.8

The implication is to make shared work part of how value is created and recognised. A client relationship becomes broader when colleagues do substantive work together and earn trust through it. A succession pipeline becomes credible when people practise responsibility before inheriting it.

The institution also contributes to the star. In a study of securities analysts, Boris Groysberg, Linda-Eling Lee and Ashish Nanda found that performance after changing employers depended partly on the destination firm’s capabilities and whether colleagues moved too. Stars moving with teams or to stronger firms did not show the same significant performance decline found in other moves.9

That study concerns analysts, not law-firm survival. Its relevance is the reminder that individual performance can depend on capabilities the organisation helps assemble. Leaders need to understand and sustain those capabilities, including the contributions of people who receive less public credit.

BQ’s thesis is that people’s growth should accumulate into organisational capability.

For a leadership team, that requires evidence of what the organisation is becoming able to do. Alongside revenue and individual performance, it should examine whether responsibility is becoming more widely shared, whether successors are gaining experience and whether collaboration survives the way rewards are allocated.

A useful review would ask which client relationships depend on one person; which decisions repeatedly return to the same small group; which future leaders have actually exercised judgment under pressure; and which commitments constrain the institution’s ability to invest in its next generation.

These are questions about how the organisation operates. They connect people decisions with strategy, governance and financial resilience. They also make growth a wider ambition than acquiring or retaining a few already recognised stars.

People remain free to pursue their careers. An institution earns their continued commitment through the value of working together: capable colleagues, fair arrangements, credible leadership and opportunities to become more than they could alone.

None of this demonstrates that a particular intervention would have saved Weil. Partnerships have specific financial and ownership structures, and the full explanation of this crisis is still emerging. The research and precedents do, however, give other leaders concrete dependencies to examine.

A while at an institution should leave people more capable. The harder organisational achievement is to ensure that their work together leaves behind a firm that can keep learning, deciding and delivering when its leading names change.

Endnotes

1. Mike Scarcella and Sara Merken, “What’s next for law firm Weil Gotshal as it plans dissolution,” Reuters, 29 October 2026, syndicated by SRN News. Read the report. Source for Weil’s scale, partner departures, succession disruption, pending partnership vote and intended out-of-court wind-down. News position checked on 30 October 2026; a recommendation is not a completed dissolution.
2. John D. Morley, “Why Law Firms Collapse,” The Business Lawyer, vol. 75, pp. 1399–1440, 2020. Paper and bibliographic record. See also Morley’s author-written explanation for Harvard Law School’s Center on the Legal Profession. Historical and theoretical analysis of partner ownership, withdrawal incentives and relative profitability; not a study of Weil’s 2026 crisis.
3. Andrew Longstreth and Nate Raymond, “The Dewey Chronicles: Rise and Fall of a Legal Titan,” Reuters investigation, republished by Insurance Journal, 14 May 2012. Read the investigation. Based on reporting and interviews about compensation, debt and governance before the bankruptcy. Dewey & LeBoeuf LLP, “Dewey & LeBoeuf LLP Files for Chapter 11 Protection; Seeks Orderly Wind-Down of Business,” 28 May 2012. Firm announcement. Confirms the filing and intended liquidation.
4. Supreme Court of California, Heller Ehrman LLP v. Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, 4 Cal.5th 467, case S236208, decided 5 March 2018, factual background, section I. Court opinion, reproduced by OpenJurist. Used for the sequence of financial distress, creditor default and dissolution in 2008. The judgment concerns rights to fees on unfinished matters; it is not a general study of organisational failure.
5. Bloomberg Law, “Stroock Goes Bust: Big Law Firm to Wind Down After Departures,” 31 October 2023.Contemporaneous reporting. Reports team departures and the end of merger discussions. Stroock & Stroock & Lavan LLP, “Stroock Law Firm Confirms Dissolution,” 29 November 2023. Firm announcement. Confirms the 17 November effective date and the departure of 28 partners to Hogan Lovells. The comparison concerns organisational sequence, not identical finances or causes.
6. Laura Empson, “Ambiguous Authority and Hidden Hierarchy: Collective Leadership in an Elite Professional Service Firm,” Leadership, 16(1), pp. 62–86, 2020. DOI: 10.1177/1742715019886769. University bibliographic record and abstract. A qualitative study of leadership in one professional-services firm during crisis. It informs the discussion of informal power; the succession implications here are the article’s interpretation.
7. The Economist, “Weil’s collapse and the death of corporate loyalty,” syndicated by Hindustan Times, 29 October 2026. Read the commentary. Provides the “elite collectivism” framing. This is commentary, distinct from the empirical research and reporting cited elsewhere.
8. Heidi K. Gardner, “Collaboration in Law Firms: The new wave of client service,” The Practice, Harvard Law School Center on the Legal Profession, September/October 2015. Read the research article. Draws on financial and personnel records across firms, interviews and surveys. Supports the relationship between collaboration and subsequent business growth, with statistical controls; it does not test whether collaboration prevents dissolution.
9. Boris Groysberg, Linda-Eling Lee and Ashish Nanda, “Can They Take It With Them? The Portability of Star Knowledge Workers’ Performance,” Management Science, 54(7), pp. 1213–1230, 2008. DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.1070.0809. Study of star securities analysts changing employers. Used for the role of teams and firm capabilities in individual performance, not as direct evidence about law firms or Weil.