Weil, Gotshal & Manges

Overview

The firm was founded in New York City in 1931 by Frank Weil, Sylvan Gotshal, and Horace Manges. Since 1968, Weil has been headquartered in the General Motors building, overlooking Central Park, in New York City's Manhattan borough.

After its founding in 1931, the firm grew steadily in the following decades, taking on clients including General Electric and General Motors, and becoming one of the largest law firms in the country. In 1975, the firm opened an office in Washington, D.C., its first outside New York City, followed in the 1980s by locations in Miami, Houston and Dallas. In 1991 Weil was the first global, non-California law firm to open a Silicon Valley office, in Redwood Shores, California. Later, the firm further spread its practice, notably in non-contentious finance and private equity practice.

The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the subsequent move by Central and Eastern European countries toward market-based economies prompted the firm to launch its international expansion. It established offices in Budapest, Prague and Warsaw in the early 1990s, followed by the establishment of offices in Frankfurt, London, Munich and Paris.

In the 21st century, the firm opened offices in Beijing, Dubai, Hong Kong, and Shanghai; it later closed Dubai (2017) and ended its mainland China presence—shutting Beijing on 31 December 2023 and Shanghai in August 2024—while consolidating Asia operations in Hong Kong.{{cite news |title=Middle East exodus continues: Weil shuts Dubai arm despite rebound year as PEP cracks $3m |work=Legal Business |date=14 February 2017 |url=https://www.legalbusiness.co.uk/law-firms/blogs/middle-east-exodus-continues-weil-shuts-dubai-arm-despite-rebound-year-as-pep-cracks-3m/ |access-date=8 September 2025}}{{cite news |title=US law firm Weil exits Beijing, 'in discussions' for Shanghai closure |work=Reuters |date=27 March 2024 |url=https://www.reuters.com/legal/legalindustry/us-law-firm-weil-exits-beijing-in-discussions-shanghai-closure-2024-03-27/ |access-date=8 September 2025}}{{cite web |title=Weil closes in Shanghai, ending 20-year mainland presence |website=Law.asia (China Business Law Journal) |date=13 August 2024 |url=https://law.asia/weil-closes-shanghai-branch/ |access-date=8 September 2025}}{{cite web |title=Locations |website=Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP |url=https://www.weil.com/locations |access-date=8 September 2025}}

In November 2023, amid a wave of antisemitic incidents at elite U.S. law schools, Weil, Gotshal & Manges was among a group of major law firms who sent a letter to top law school deans warning them that an escalation in incidents targeting Jewish students would have corporate hiring consequences. The letter said "We look to you to ensure your students who hope to join our firms after graduation are prepared to be an active part of workplace communities that have zero tolerance policies for any form of discrimination or harassment, much less the kind that has been taking place on some law school campuses."

In July 2024, Weil opened new offices in Los Angeles and San Francisco, bringing on private equity partners Tana Ryan and Navneet Rekhi from Latham & Watkins to lead the expansion.

Notable cases

• Olympus Corporation's Olympus scandal deal for British medical-equipment maker Gyrus earned Weil an undisclosed portion of the extraordinary $687 million fee; the $2 billion acquisition was the largest in Olympus's history; the fee was shared with the deal's financial advisor and its broker. The auditor KPMG refused to issue an unqualified audit report due to issues with the Gyrus deal, for which a 21-attorney Weil team was legal advisor
• General Electric's $11.6 billion sale of GE Plastics to Saudi Basic Industries
• DirecTV's $25 billion stock-for-stock merger with Liberty Entertainment
• Sanofi Aventis's $18 billion acquisition of Genzyme
• General Electric's $35 billion joint venture with Comcast for ownership of NBC Universal
• Apple Inc.'s favorable settlement of litigation with Burst.com
• Sears Holding's 2018 Restructuring Plan
• CBS Corporation's successful defense against a lawsuit filed by former reporter and news anchorman Dan Rather
• ExxonMobil's successful breach of contract suit against Saudi Basic Industries resulting in a $400 million jury award, one of the largest in history
• eBay's successful defense in trademark litigation with Tiffany & Co.
• Enron bankruptcy
• Lehman Brothers bankruptcy
• Washington Mutual bankruptcy
• WorldCom bankruptcy
• General Motors bankruptcy
• DirecTV's $49 billion sale to AT&T
• Lenovo's $2.9 billion acquisition of Motorola from Google
• Verizon's $4.4 billion acquisition of AOL
• Intel's $16 billion acquisition of Altera
• Facebook's $19 billion acquisition of WhatsApp
• Oracle's $9 billion acquisition of NetSuite

Notable alumni

• Richard Ben-Veniste, member of the 9/11 Commission
• Adam Bodnar, former Polish Ombudsman for Citizen Rights and current Minister of Justice
• Jason Boyarski, music industry lawyer
• Vernon S. Broderick, judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York
• Robert B. Charles, Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs
• Greg Coleman, first Solicitor General of Texas
• Gregg Costa, judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
• Christopher Nixon Cox, grandson of Richard Nixon
• Mekka Don, rapper
• Barry Eisler, novelist, creator of John Rain novels
• Michael Francies, managing partner of the firm's London office
• Jill M. Friedman, who represented Guantanamo Bay detention camp prisoners, author of The Saudi Repatriates Report
• Charles Goldstein, real estate lawyer
• Martin D. Ginsburg, lawyer, husband of Ruth Bader Ginsburg
• Sylvan Gotshal, founding partner
• Lawrence Otis Graham, best-selling author
• Caitlin Halligan, former Solicitor General of New York
• George J. Hazel, judge of the United States District Court for the District of Maryland
• Melinda Katz, Queens County District Attorney
• Jeffrey L. Kessler, noted sports industry lawyer
• Horace Manges, founding partner
• Harvey R. Miller, Vice Chairman of Greenhill & Co.
• Ira Millstein, Longest-practicing partner in big law.
• Tamika Montgomery-Reeves, associate justice of the Delaware Supreme Court
• Raymond Nimmer, former dean of the University of Houston Law Center
• Robert Odle, Assistant Secretary in the United States Department of Energy under Ronald Reagan
• Harriet Pilpel, women's rights activist
• John A. E. Pottow, professor at the University of Michigan Law School
• Rob Simmelkjaer, television journalist and executive
• Stanley Sporkin, senior judge on the United States District Court for the District of Columbia
• Robert R. Summerhays, judge of the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana
• Theodore Tannenwald Jr., judge of the United States Tax Court
• Heath Tarbert, former chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission
• Suzanne Israel Tufts, Assistant Secretary in the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development
• Frank Weil, founding partner

Notes

References

References

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28. Greene, Jay. (July 28, 2016). "Oracle to Buy Cloud-Software Provider NetSuite for $9.3 Billion". [[The Wall Street Journal]].
29. "Jon Weber".