Weil’s collapse and the death of corporate loyalty

Schumpeter on Weil, Gotshal & Manges, the Manhattan law firm known for the Enron and Lehman bankruptcies, which suffered a “run on the bank” and is preparing to wind down. Reported facts: it began last month when a top mergers lawyer left for Cravath; rivals poached lawyers, the partner due to take the top job declined, merger talks collapsed and Weil hired bankruptcy lawyers itself; partners had earned almost $6m a year on average. The column argues the issue wasn’t profitability but superstar lawyers’ new power to extract pay and leave fast, ending the partnership era’s “elite collectivism” (banks went first, Goldman listed in 1999). It expects Weil not to be the last, and sees the future in hedge funds like Citadel or Millennium, where portfolio managers are essentially well-paid gig workers. Its one counter-example: AI frontier labs, constantly raided for researchers, keep collectivist impulses because of shared beliefs about AI’s dangers.