Gibson Dunn is hiring a team of Wachtell partners led by executive committee co-chair William Savitt, in a move that marks the latest in a series of once-rare departures from the white-shoe firm.
Savitt has been at the New York firm since 2000, becoming co-chair of its executive committee in late 2023 alongside corporate partner Andrew Nussbaum. He is also co-chair of the firm’s litigation department.
He will be followed to Gibson Dunn by five other Wachtell litigation partners – Sarah Eddy, Randall Jackson, Ryan McLeod, Anitha Reddy and Bradley Wilson. Savitt will co-chair Gibson Dunn’s litigation practice group.
In a statement, Gibson Dunn chair Barbara Becker described the team hire as a ‘rare and powerful combination.’
‘It brings together the nation’s foremost corporate governance, M&A, and high-stakes trial litigation team with the deepest trial, appellate, and regulatory platform in the legal profession,’ she said. ‘There is no other pairing in the market that offers clients more talent, deeper experience, or a better track record.’
She added: ‘This team could have gone anywhere in the world. Gibson Dunn was the only firm they considered.’
Orin Snyder, co-chair of the firm’s trials practice group, added: ‘We’ve been huge fans of Bill and his team for years, and bringing our forces together is a dream scenario. This partnership creates a litigation powerhouse without equal.’
Savitt has been in the headlines this year for his representation of OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman in a $150bn dispute in which Elon Musk alleged that OpenAI and its executives had violated the company’s founding agreement by abandoning its original non-profit mission.
This May, a California federal court ruled in favour of Altman and OpenAI, finding that Musk had waited too long to file his suit.
Savitt has been instrumental in some of Wachtell’s most high-profile cases, including acting for Twitter in its suit against Musk, when Musk sought to terminate his agreement to acquire Twitter for $44bn. Twitter prevailed, and the deal closed in October 2022.
Musk is a key client of Gibson Dunn’s, with the firm recently advising Musk-owned SpaceX on its record-breaking IPO. The firm also earlier advised SpaceX on its combination with xAI, which is also owned by Musk.
The exits mark a further hit for Wachtell – a firm historically well-known for partner retention – which has seen a number of departures to rival US firms since January.
These include corporate partner Alison Preiss, who left for Simpson Thacher in January, finance partner Emily Johnson and M&A partner Mark Stagliano, who both moved to Latham & Watkins in February, and restructuring and finance chair Joshua Feltman, who joined Kirkland & Ellis in April.
Earlier exits from Wachtell to Latham include liability management partner John Sobolewski in February 2025, and top dealmaker Zach Podolsky that June.
In a statement, the firm said: ‘Wachtell Lipton is performing at its highest level across every metric. The firm is having a record year, continues at the top of all the league tables and is as strong as it has ever been. We remain steadfast in our commitment to the same standards of excellence and elite client service in each of our practice areas, including our premier litigation group, that have defined the firm for sixty years.’
Wachtell, one of the last bastions of the old school partnership model, earlier this year made changes to its lockstep which were described by one ex-partner as ‘radical’.
From January this year, the firm stretched the ratio between top and bottom earners from 3:1 to 6:1, with new partners now understood to join the equity on roughly half the profit share awarded their equivalents a year earlier.
For more, see ‘They ripped the Band-Aid off’ – why Wachtell and other elite firms are tearing up partner pay
