Weil history

Founded in 1931, Weil has provided legal services to the largest public companies, private equity firms and financial institutions for more than 90 years.

Todd Lang, the firm's leading corporate specialist, joined the firm in 1948 after receiving his law degree from Yale the year before.

Millstein received his law degree from Columbia University in 1949 and worked for a few years in the Antitrust Division of the United States Department of Justice.

Among Weil's chief passions, however, was the Boy Scouts of America, where he established the National Jewish Committee on Scouting and on whose board of directors he served until his death in 1957.

1968: The firm's 47 lawyers move to new offices on Fifth Avenue overlooking Central Park.

Another Columbia University graduate, Harvey R. Miller, was hired in 1970 and became the firm's bankruptcy expert.

1975: An office in Washington, D.C., its first outside New York City, is opened.

1991: The Budapest, Warsaw, and Menlo Park, California, offices are opened.

In 1992 the law firm opened its Brussels office.

Based on its 661 lawyers, the firm ranked as number 26. Based on the law firm's 1997 gross revenue of $354 million, The American Lawyer ranked it as the United States' tenth largest law firm.

The same magazine in November 1998, in cooperation with London's Legal Business, used the same financial statistics to rank the firm as number 14 in its first listing of the world's largest law firms.

In October 2000 the law firm's client Texaco Inc., which operated in about 150 nations, announced plans to merge with Chevron Corporation to create ChevronTexaco based in San Francisco.

Life Technologies in securing a major appellate victory in its high-stakes patent dispute with Promega regarding gene-testing technology by extinguishing a $52 million infringement jury verdict Life Technologies suffered in 2012, prior to Weil’s involvement in the case.

Brought in as lead trial counsel in 2016, Weil succeeded in erasing several hundred million dollars in potential treble damages, plus attorneys’ fees, and brought nearly a decade of litigation to a close.

Weil was involved in 13 of the largest bankruptcies filed in the United States in 2017, including acting as lead debtors’ counsel for Takata, one of 2017’s largest international restructurings.

In June 2018, Weil also was named the sole winner in the “Class Action” category in the New York Law Journal’s “Litigation Department of the Year” competition.

Partners received numerous individual recognitions for legal excellence, as well as their commitment to diversity and the community, in 2021