Weil, Gotshal & Manges

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Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP is one of the world's largest and most highly regarded law firms, headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1931, the law firm has 20 offices across the United States, Europe, and Asia. Weil Gotshal uses the expertise of its more than 1,200 lawyers across its practice areas to serve clients such as General Electric and CBS Broadcasting. The firm is structured along three primary departments: corporate, litigation/regulatory, and business finance & restructuring. Other practice areas include tax and trusts & estates. Weil Gotshal is particularly well known for its bankruptcy, antitrust, private equity, and intellectual property practices.

[edit] History

Founded in 1931 in New York City, in 1968, Weil Gotshal moved to the firm's current headquarters, the General Motors Building, overlooking New York City's Central Park on Fifth Avenue in midtown Manhattan. In 1975, the firm formally opened its first office outside of New York, in Washington DC. The Washington office has grown to roughly 80 lawyers in practices including antitrust, environmental law, international trade, public policy, corporate, banking, litigation/regulatory, real estate, securities and tax. A Miami office subsequently opened in 1981. The firm established has since opened Texas offices in Houston, Dallas and Austin, which together currently include a total of more than 120 lawyers.

In the 1990s, Weil Gotshal became the first national US law firm to open an office in Silicon Valley. Since then, the firm has opened offices in Boston and Providence.

Since the 1990s, Weil has opened several offices outside of the United States, including Brussels, Budapest, Frankfurt, London, Munich, Paris, Prague, Shanghai, Singapore and Warsaw. Weil Gotshal was one of the first major law firms to make a serious commitment to Central and Eastern Europe when these economies began to liberalize. In 2004, Weil continued its expansion in Asia with the addition of an an office in Shanghai.

[edit] Recognition

Additionally, several of Weil's New York practices were ranked highly by Chambers, including private equity, intellectual property, general commercial litigation, and media & entertainment. Weil also has a strong structured finance/securitization practice.

Weil Gotshal was ranked 11th on The American Lawyer’s A-List for 2006, the firm's third appearance on the four year old A-List, which includes only 20 of the AmLaw 200 firms. [1] The American Lawyer A-List ranks firms based on a formula that weighs economic success, pro bono achievement, associate satisfaction and workplace diversity.

For 2007, Weil Gotshal was ranked #4 on the AveryIndex's Best Prestigious Law Firms to Work For [2]. This ranking includes prestige and enjoyment of work.

In past years, the Vault has consistently ranked Weil within the top ten on its "Top 100 Most Prestigious Firms", a survey which asks law firm associates to rank the prestige of various firms. [3] In the 2007 edition, The Vault survey also ranked several of Weil's individual practice areas among the nation's ten best, including Bankruptcy (1st), Intellectual Property (6th), and Corporate (10th). Further, in 2007 the Vault ranked Weil, one of the "Best 20 Firms to Work For," one of only three large New York-based firms to make the list. [4]

Chambers USA: America's Leading Lawyers for Business honored 88 attorneys from Weil Gotshal in the 2006 edition. For practice areas, Weil Gotshal was listed in the #1 ranking tier for Antitrust (New York), Bankruptcy/Restructuring (New York), Intellectual Property (California), Private Equity: Buyouts & Venture Capital Investment (Massachusetts), and Wealth Management (National). [5] In 2004, Chambers Global named Weil Gotshal its U.S. Private Equity Law Firm of the Year.