William Savitt

Poaching star partners with staggering pay packages has become an industry norm in a hyper-competitive legal market.

But no move was more surprising than the July departure of William Savitt, who, along with five other partners, left his illustrious 20-year perch at Wachtel, Lipton, Rosen, and Katz for rival Gibson Dunn.

Savitt spent his entire private practice career at Wachtell, climbing the ranks to co-lead the Wall Street powerhouse, where partner pay, according to the American lawyer, averages $12 million a year.

The veteran corporate litigator has handled high-stakes matters for Twitter, Coinbase, Meta, and Warner Bros.

And just this week, we had Sidley hiring Deborah Paul as the co-head of its tax practice.

And of course, last month came the litigation-flavoured bombshell when the co-chair of Wachtell's Executive Compensation Committee, Bill Savitt, and a group of five other disputes partners quit for Gibson Dunn.

This is the world turning on its head.

And sharp listeners will not have missed the obvious fact that all of the firms these firms have joined are much, much larger than Wachtel.

There was a sort of an email that came to light with the Bradcarp affair, I think, when...

It was really clear that Wachtell had been considering internally potentially to hire litigators or to hire partners out of Paul Weiss when Paul Weiss was going through some of its post-Trump convulsions.

But I think that there is a sort of what's really clear, particularly with Bill Savitt, because he is, he was so important.

He was, you know, on the exec.