Weil Gotshal & Manges enjoys a reputation as a firm whose litigation bench is one of the most comprehensive in terms of practice depth. The firm’s national reach is spread among offices on the East Coast in New York and DC, throughout several locations in California, two locations in Texas, one in Boston and a location in Miami. Its practice area portfolio also covers a lot of ground, with product liability, bankruptcy, antitrust, commercial, intellectual property, securities and white-collar crime all playing prominent positions in the overall composition of the firm’s litigation service offerings.
The firm made a notable augmentation to these services within the past couple of years with the recruits of DC-based Mark Perry and Drew Tulumello, both of whom joined Weil from Gibson Dunn and both of whom provide strategic enhancements to Weil’s appellate capacity. “Weil has really made a significant investment here,” declares a peer in reference to the firm’s development of the appeals practice. “They are now officially a player in that specialty – they went from 0 to 100.” More recently, in July 2025, the firm implemented an investment in the buildout of its intellectual-property capacity with the addition of
Doug Lumish, a Bay Area patent-focused star formerly with Latham & Watkins.
David Lender, the New York-based global head of litigation, continues to remain one of its most visible and active all-purpose trial lawyers. “He continues to impress,” offers a peer, summing up the general consensus. Lender led a team that secured a $55.5 million trial victory on behalf of GoodRx, a provider of drug discount coupons, before the American Arbitration Association in a breach-of-contract dispute against a service provider. The victory, which also included a permanent injunction, followed a week-long arbitration hearing in November 2023. Lender was also recently retained by global energy/chemical company ExxonMobil to serve as lead national trial counsel in defense of numerous high-stakes public-nuisance lawsuits regarding plastics pollution. Currently, there are three cases, with more expected: one filed by the California state Attorney General alleging that ExxonMobil deceptively promoted chemical recycling as a solution for the plastics crisis; another filed by environmental NGO Sierra Club and other entities asserting claims for nuisance and unfair competition, and making similar allegations as the California AG case; and still another recently filed by Ford County, Kansas, seeking to represent a class of counties in Kansas that allegedly have incurred and will continue to incur sanitation costs for plastic waste clean-up and disposal. These cases, which are in their infancy, will be bellwether cases to watch as states and municipalities seek to hold chemical producers responsible for plastics pollution, even as those states and municipalities have failed to execute viable recycling programs that help combat pollution.
Diane Sullivan, another trial veteran who has been celebrated in this capacity for decades, has been retained by Duke Energy as lead trial counsel in a high-stakes antitrust dispute involving wholesale power generation. Duke sued NTE Carolinas for breach of contract, and NTE Carolinas countersued, alleging that Duke, as a competitor, has monopoly power in the wholesale electric power market in the Southeast and used anti-competitive behavior to continue their monopoly. The district court granted Duke’s motion for summary judgment on all antitrust issues, and the parties settled Duke’s breach-of-contract claims. NTE Carolinas appealed the ruling on the antitrust claims, and the Fourth Circuit vacated the judgment. A team composed of
David Yohai, Theodore Tsekerides and Adam Hemlock successfully represented long-time client Warner Bros. Discovery, and its subsidiary, Turner Broadcasting (together, WBD) in a high-profile lawsuit against the National Basketball Association. The suit involved the NBA’s attempt to give the rights to broadcast NBA games to Amazon and take them away from TNT. Under its agreement with the NBA, WBD had the right to match any offer that the NBA receives for the right to distribute NBA games for the 2025-2026 season and beyond. In July 2024, Amazon Prime Video made an offer to the NBA for a package of games, which WBD matched. However, the NBA rejected WBD’s match and struck a deal with Amazon. After the court set trial for April 2025, the parties entered into a global settlement resolving the dispute in which WBD and TNT retain the rights to broadcast basketball games.
Weil’s securities is helmed by New York’s John Neuwirth, who, together with future star
Josh Amsel, has been successfully defending long-time client AMC Entertainment in fast-tracked stockholder litigation in Delaware Chancery Court, arising from the global movie theater chain’s planned overhaul of its capital structure. The plaintiffs in the consolidated case allege that AMC’s senior management and board of directors breached their fiduciary duties by diluting common stockholders’ voting power through the creation of a new preferred class of securities and a subsequent planned reverse stock split. Just weeks before a hearing, the Weil team negotiated a settlement, the approval process of which became a highly contested affair, with a number of objections before Weil ultimately secured court approval, affirmed by the Delaware Supreme Court in May 2024.
Weil is also one of the few “Big Law” firms to house a labor-and-employment litigation group, with New York’s
John Barry being its central figure. A peer and former opponent testifies, “I had an ugly knock-down, nasty fight with John – that guy was relentless! But when it came time to settle, we were able to sit down and get it done. I was impressed.”