By Julius Melnitzer | November 3, 2026
Weil, Gotshal & Manges, one of Wall Street’s most prestigious law firms, is winding down. It had no debt. Its 2025 profit per equity partner (PEP) was US$5.593 million, up 4.13 per cent from the year before, and 2026 was looking even brighter. The firm’s failure, it turns out, is all about voracious appetite — in a word, greed.
The problem was that “even brighter” was not nearly as bright as its competitors’ results: all but one of the other top 20 firms had double-digit growth in 2025, when Kirkland & Ellis boasted PEP of US$11.12 million.
Michael Aiello, Weil’s highest-paid partner at more than US$20 million annually, announced in September that he was taking five partners with him to Cravath, Swaine & Moore. Ironically, Cravath was the only other firm in the top 20 that hadn’t experienced double-digit growth in 2025. By late October, more than 50 partners had either left or announced their departures. What remained of Weil couldn’t cope with the fixed costs, so — after failed merger talks — management recommended an orderly wind-down as the only sensible remaining option. The partners are expected to vote on it soon.
I’ve seen no reports that the departing partners felt shortchanged on their share of Weil’s profits. And, given that average PEP exceeded US$5 million, there’s no suggestion that shelter or food was in short supply. The issue was the size of the portions at Weil’s dining table: there was more to be had elsewhere. Whatever else drove the first departures, the money explains where they went.
Weil has been around for 95 years. For much of that time, a firm’s reputation outweighed individual partners’ drawing power: clients, for the most part, stuck with the firm.
That’s not true anymore. Individual partners have proprietary “books of business,” for which the firm is merely a platform. As comparative earnings among the top firms became publicly available, mobility became the fashion.
But law is supposed to be a profession, not just another business. And a self-regulating profession at that, one that maintains its monopoly because the public somehow still believes that lawyers are there to serve interests other than their own.
The numbers don’t support that belief. In some Canadian family courts, up to 80 per cent of litigants represented themselves, according to a 2013 study by Julie Macfarlane, founder of the National Self-Represented Litigants Project. Close to 60 per cent of the self-represented litigants surveyed in a 2021 follow-up report earned less than $30,000 a year. The median income for Canadian families was $108,900 after tax in 2024.
So here’s the conundrum: at one extreme, the profession can’t find lawyers for people earning $30,000 annually (anecdotally, people earning far more can’t afford lawyers either); at the other end, profit of US$5.6 million per equity partner amounts to failure.
To be sure, all this isn’t unique to lawyers. Judging pay by rank rather than in absolute terms is the name of the game not only in big business, but also for athletes and entertainers. Someone making $50 million while peers make $100 million is, by that measure, underpaid in a market where the highest bidder takes all.
Leaving for more money is rational. But is it rational in what still calls itself a profession?
And let’s not assume that the Weil situation is an American phenomenon. Canadian partners, for the most part, earn far less than their US counterparts, but the difference in scale doesn’t change the question.
One Weil partner asked an interviewer, “If Weil isn’t safe, then what firm is safe?”
Fair enough. But it’s the wrong question. The right one is what the profession is all about.
Julius Melnitzer is a Toronto-based writer who focuses on law, legal affairs, and the business of law. Follow him on LegalWriter.net or email him at julius@legalwriter.net.