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Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP
Headquarters	General Motors Building; New York City, New York, United States
No. of offices	15
No. of attorneys	1,217 (2024)
Major practice areas	General practice
Key people	Barry M. Wolf, Executive Partner, Management Committee Chair
Revenue	$1.86 billion (2021)
Date founded	1931 (New York City)
Founder	Frank Weil; Sylvan Gotshal; Horace Manges
Company type	Limited-liability partnership
Website	weil.com

Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP is an American international law firm with approximately 1,100 attorneys, headquartered in New York City. With a gross annual revenue in excess of $1.8 billion, it is among the world's largest law firms according to The American Lawyer's AmLaw 100 survey.^[3]^[4]

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.^[5]

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.^[6] 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, the year that the internet became publicly available, 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.^[7]

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 established offices in Beijing, Dubai, Hong Kong, and Shanghai. As of 2012^[update], one-quarter of the firm's lawyers have practiced outside the U.S.

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."^[8]

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^[9]
General Electric's $11.6 billion sale of GE Plastics to Saudi Basic Industries^[10]
DirecTV's $25 billion stock-for-stock merger with Liberty Entertainment^[11]
Sanofi Aventis's $18 billion acquisition of Genzyme^[12]
General Electric's $35 billion joint venture with Comcast for ownership of NBC Universal^[13]
Apple Inc.'s favorable settlement of litigation with Burst.com
Sears Holding's 2018 Restructuring Plan ^{[citation needed]}
CBS Corporation's successful defense against a lawsuit filed by former reporter and news anchorman Dan Rather^[14]
ExxonMobil's successful breach of contract suit against Saudi Basic Industries resulting in a $400 million jury award, one of the largest in history^{[citation needed]}
eBay's successful defense in trademark litigation with Tiffany & Co.^[15]
Enron bankruptcy^[16]
Lehman Brothers bankruptcy^[17]
Washington Mutual bankruptcy^[18]
WorldCom bankruptcy^[19]
General Motors bankruptcy^[20]
DirecTV's $49 billion sale to AT&T^[21]
Lenovo's $2.9 billion acquisition of Motorola from Google^[22]
Verizon's $4.4 billion acquisition of AOL^[23]
Intel's $16 billion acquisition of Altera^[24]
Facebook's $19 billion acquisition of WhatsApp^[25]
Oracle's $9 billion acquisition of NetSuite^[26]