One of my favorite actors, Jon Hamm, first gained significant notoriety in his role as Don Draper on the series Mad Men. As he put it, it took him twelve years to become an overnight success.

The same concept applies to law firms that implode. Weil did not fall apart in seven days. Issues had been brewing below the surface for years.

When I first started working in the legal industry in 2009, it was a significant change from my previous niche of corporate executive search. I discovered that law firms are fragile institutions. I realized that a law firm is nothing more than a collective of peers held together only by conditional promises to each other.

Before Stroock imploded, I arranged for one of my clients, the chairman of an AmLaw 50 firm, to meet with Stroock's chairman to discuss a possible combination. My client passed. His firm was the third in a line of law firms to consider Stroock, which eventually imploded.

There are patterns to everything, and right now I see several firms showing the same yellow and red warning signs on a dashboard I created to measure the strength and health of a firm. I have broken these signs into five segments. If you are a law firm partner, review them and make an honest assessment of whether the canary in the coal mine is telling you it's time to move.

Not every warning sign on this list applied to Weil. Weil's story illustrates many of them, but others, such as delayed vendor payments, are issues that can affect the overall health of any firm.

Weil's numbers told the story long before the headlines did. Revenue rose less than 3% last year while the 50 largest firms grew more than 13%, according to Wells Fargo data reported by Bloomberg Law. Davis Polk, Simpson Thacher and Paul Weiss passed Weil on key metrics.

The gap wasn't new. From 2008 to 2025, Weil grew revenue at half the annualized rate of its competitors, based on American Lawyer and Citi data. Profits per equity partner were flat in 2023 while several peers posted increases, the ABA Journal reported. And less than five months before the wind-down, Weil opened an expanded Boston office of more than 37,000 square feet, according to Boston.com.

The lesson is that a firm can stay profitable and still fall behind. Growth relative to peers is the number to watch.

Questions to ask:

1. Has the firm stopped paying vendor bills due in the fourth quarter until the first quarter to make year-end numbers look better? Yes, this happens.

2. Is profit per equity partner falling while peer firms' PEP is rising?

3. Have partner distributions been delayed, or have capital contributions gone up?

4. Is the firm de-equitizing partners or quietly growing the non-equity tier?

5. Is revenue concentrated in one practice group or a handful of rainmakers?

6. Are realization and collections slipping, with a frantic push to collect at year-end?

7. Is the firm closing offices, subleasing space, or carrying an oversized headquarters lease?

8. Has the firm opened offices in several new markets in quick succession, without a clear strategy tying that expansion to its established partners?

9. Has the business development and marketing budget been cut?

Weil's succession problem played out in public. In February 2025, the firm announced that chair Barry Wolf would retire at the mandatory age. Ramona Nee was named in March to succeed him on January 1, 2027, then told leadership she would not take the job, according to Bloomberg Law.

The bench behind the chair thinned at the same time. At least seven management committee members left or were reported to be leaving after late 2024, The Indiana Lawyer reported. Merger talks with Willkie collapsed after the two firms had signed a nondisclosure agreement, and one outlet reports an earlier failed round with Vinson & Elkins.

Current and former Weil lawyers told Semafor that leadership never convinced senior partners it had a vision for a market being reshaped by AI and outsized pay packages. When partners stop believing in the plan, they start planning their own exits.

Questions to ask:

10. Is there a succession plan in place?

11. Are there consistently bad management decisions?

12. Have multiple C-level staff turned over without staying long?

13. Has the chair stepped down suddenly, or was there a contested leadership election?

14. Has the compensation system changed abruptly?

15. Has a publicized merger failed? Collapsed talks often mean a firm is shopping for a rescue.

At Weil, the departures came in groups, and they came from the top. Corporate department chair Mike Aiello moved to Cravath with five other partners, according to Reuters as reported by PYMNTS. Doug Warner, global co-head of private equity, left for Paul Weiss and was at least the 14th Weil leader to leave since the start of 2026, per The American Lawyer.

The practice decline showed up in the deal tables first. Weil ranked sixth in global private equity deal advising six years ago and fell out of the top 20 last year, based on Bloomberg data. The firm tried to hire its way out, adding 39 lateral partners last year, the most in its history. Sources told Bloomberg Law that Weil still struggled to land rainmakers while competitors picked off its own partners.

By the end, at least one practice group leader was telling associates to look for jobs elsewhere, The Indiana Lawyer reported. Headcount losses are survivable. Losing the people who own the client relationships usually isn't.

Questions to ask:

16. Have large groups left over short periods of time?

17. Are departing partners taking anchor clients with them?

18. Are more partners leaving than arriving laterally over an 18- to 24-month window?

19. Is the firm paying large guarantees to replace the talent it's losing?

20. Is it a top 50 firm that doesn't pay on the Cravath scale?

21. Have summer classes been cut, start dates deferred, or offers rescinded?

22. Are the firm's own partners calling recruiters? When the inbound calls from one firm spike, the market usually learns why six months later.

Weil's slide arguably began with a round of cuts more than a decade ago. In 2013, the firm laid off 60 associates and 110 support staff and adjusted pay for some partners, Fox Business reported at the time. According to Bloomberg Law, partners who weren't targeted by those cuts then began to leave. A firm that cuts to protect profits can trigger the very exits it was trying to prevent.

This time, associates and staff were told they would receive 90 days of salary and benefits, The Indiana Lawyer reported. How a firm treats the people it lets go tells the market how it will treat everyone else.

Reputation risk also builds through allegations. A single lawsuit or complaint can be noise. Several, across different matters, suggest there may be something there even before anything is proven. Pay equity claims deserve special attention: they point to problems in the compensation system, and discovery can expose pay data across the whole partnership.

Questions to ask:

23. Has there been negative press about ethics or malpractice?

24. Has there been negative press about sexual harassment?

25. Have tranches of staff been let go with minimal severance?

26. Is there a pattern of allegations, such as multiple lawsuits or complaints, even if none is proven?

27. Are female attorneys suing the firm for equal pay?

Culture is the last line of defense. When the numbers slip, partners who trust each other stay and fight. When they don't, everyone runs the math on their own book. By the end at Weil, one associate told Bloomberg Law that everyone now had to look out for themselves and find new jobs.

The early signs are quieter. Associates complain about support. Partners start fighting over origination credit and stop introducing colleagues to their clients. Once cross-selling stops, the partnership is already fraying.

Questions to ask:

28. Are there complaints about associate support?

29. Is morale poor?

30. Are partners fighting over origination credit and hoarding clients instead of cross-selling?

No single answer on this list means a firm is failing. Every firm loses partners, misses a year, or faces a lawsuit. What matters is the cluster. Weil showed signs in all five areas at once: slow relative growth, a broken succession, group departures, reputational damage from past cuts, and a culture where people stopped betting on each other.

Score your own firm honestly. If the yes answers start stacking up across more than one area, the canary has stopped singing.

Over my career as a legal recruiter and deal-maker, I have met in person with leadership at more than 80 law firms, in their own offices, and I have spoken with several thousand law firm partners about what is really happening inside their firms. Those two vantage points, the chairman's office and the hallway, are what taught me to read the warning signs.

But spotting trouble is only half of what I do. The more meaningful half is helping healthy firms, and partners who are serious about reaching their full potential, find each other through lateral moves, group moves and firm combinations. When the right partner lands at the right firm, every light on the dashboard turns green, and you can hear the canaries singing again.

Scott Love is the founder of The Attorney Search Group. A legal deal-maker, he focuses on creating successful combinations of law firms, partners, and groups among AmLaw 100 and 200 firms.

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