Elite Manhattan law firm Cravath kicked off the year with news no firm wants: four partners announced departures in less than two weeks.
A prominent banking lawyer who helped launch Cravath’s Washington office and the head of the firm’s investigations and regulatory enforcement practice are among those who hit the exit. Three of the four partners jumped to competing firms.
Revolving doors at top law firms often spin briskly at the start of each year, as partners delay announcing career moves until they collect the previous year’s full compensation. The exits at Cravath are notable because the prestigious Wall Street firm keeps its partner roll tight and participates in the lateral hiring game much less frequently than many of its rivals, even in a new era of free agency for corporate lawyers.
“The lateral partner market has gotten more and more active, and we always felt it was a matter of time before it reached the very elite tier of firms,” said Jeffrey Lowe, market president of Washington DC for legal recruitment firm CenterPeak. “The gloves are off and virtually no one is untouchable anymore. People should get used to seeing that at firms that historically lost very few partners.”
A Cravath, Swaine & Moore spokesperson didn’t provide a comment on the exits, other than to wish the departing partners well.
High payouts for star partners have overtaken the collegiality that used to bind lawyers to firms for their entire careers. Firms have grown in recent years by luring away rainmakers with large sums based on their expected books of business, rather than how far law school is behind them.
The Cravath exits account for a little more than 3% of the firm’s partnership, which is among the smallest for the top-grossing US law firms. The exits come after the firm in recent years broke from its longstanding seniority-based partner pay system and added a tier of salaried partners, moves already widely embraced across the industry.
“Cravath doesn’t really support stars in the same way that other law firms might, and it’s an opportunity to shine bright elsewhere,” said New York legal recruiter Alisa Levin.
Still, the firm over the last decade has maintained its place among the country’s 10 most profitable large law firms and its 50 largest by revenue, according to data from The American Lawyer. Cravath lawyers continue to snag lucrative roles advising major corporate players, such as representing Paramount Skydance Corp. in a hostile bid to buy Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. and Tylenol-maker Kenvue Inc. in its $40 billion sale to Kimberly-Clark Corp.
Many of the firm’s closest rivals were also late to change pay systems. Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison broke its modified lockstep compensation system and added a non-equity partner tier in 2024. Debevoise & Plimpton, Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, and WilmerHale added non-equity partners starting within the last few years. Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, another elite Manhattan deals firm, has continued to stick to a single-tier partnership with lockstep partner pay, despite seeing some notable departures in recent years.
Exits and Entrances
The latest departures include two senior partners: John Buretta and Jelena McWilliams.
Buretta and tax partner Andrew Davis left for Paul Hastings, while McWilliams took an executive role at fintech company Plaid Inc. Ben Joseloff joined the national security practice of Davis Polk & Wardwell.
Buretta chaired the investigations and regulatory enforcement practice at Cravath before he became Paul Hastings’ co-chair of litigation. He’d been at Cravath since leaving the Justice Department in 2013, where he oversaw the criminal division as principal deputy assistant attorney general. Buretta and Davis, in interviews with Bloomberg Law on their move to Paul Hastings, noted their new firm’s tear of aggressive lateral hiring of elite talent as motivation for joining.
Lowe said Paul Hastings has embodied the spirit of aggressive lateral hiring that has overtaken many in Big Law since the firm’s chair, Frank Lopez, assumed control in 2022. “Their new management team has been very focused on adding high-value partners and they’ve been very successful at it,” he said.
McWilliams spent nearly four years as chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. before joining Cravath to help build its Washington DC office. She was a central figure for banking clients seeking regulatory approval before federal agencies.
McWilliams would not have left “but for a unique opportunity to join senior leadership at Plaid,” she said in a statement. She said she is “grateful to Cravath for the warm welcome, utmost professionalism and genuine collegiality they extended to me.”
In a statement about her exit, Cravath said the firm looks forward to working with her in the new role.
The firm has seen relatively few partners hit the road in recent years, according to Todd Merkin, the New York-based executive director of Wegman Partners. “I still don’t think there’s any reason for alarm,” Merkin said. “I don’t think it’s been significant compared to their peer group.”
Cravath lost a total of eight partners in the past 12 months, according to data from Leopard Solutions. Longtime litigation partner David Marriott, who left for Latham & Watkins last summer, is the last partner whose departure to another firm was publicly announced prior to this year’s batch of exits. Wachtell lost four partners during the same stretch, the data show.
Cravath, which traditionally had not stepped into the lateral market, during the same time brought on six partners. The hires include Andrew Finch, a former Justice Department official who co-chaired Paul Weiss’ antitrust practice. The firm also elevated six new attorneys to its partnership in January.
“I think we need more of a sample size in the next year or two to really, officially weigh in on what this all means,” Merkin said.
To contact the reporters on this story:
To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Learn more about Bloomberg Law or Log In to keep reading:
See Breaking News in Context
Bloomberg Law provides trusted coverage of current events enhanced with legal analysis.
Already a subscriber?
Log in to keep reading or access research tools and resources.