And The Lawyer Who Stands To Lose Millions In The Transfer Deal
The Central Park “canoodling couple” story we covered this week may have dominated social media, but the story surrounding Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz keeps growing.
Fresh claims published by the New York Post allege that William “Bill” Savitt, the ‘law star’ trial lawyer whose move to Gibson Dunn sent shockwaves through the profession, was himself in a consensual relationship with fellow Wachtell litigation partner Sarah Eddy while both were at the firm.
The allegation rests on unnamed “legal sources” and has not been confirmed by either lawyer or by Wachtell. Neither, the Post notes, would it have breached firm policy: Wachtell reportedly has no non-fraternization rule.
The claim adds another chapter to one of the strangest weeks BigLaw has seen in years and there is a piquant footnote to it. Savitt and Eddy (pictured) didn’t just work together; they beat Elon Musk together, sharing American Lawyer “Litigators of the Week” honours for the OpenAI defence in May.
They have now also left Wachtell together as Eddy is one of the six partners who followed Savitt out the door.
LawFuel recently reported on Savitt’s departure, where he led one of the country’s premier litigation practices before taking five senior litigators with him to Gibson Dunn. The move alone represented a rare fracture in Wachtell’s famously stable partnership, Wachtell being a firm whose north-of-$12-million profit per partner usually keeps people firmly in the fold, and demonstrated the increasingly fierce competition for elite trial talent.
The Post puts a number on it, being a reported $96 million package to lure Savitt across.
Now the personal lives of several lawyers connected to that team have become part of the public conversation.
The claims come only days after junior partner Nathaniel Cullerton and associate Kelsey Borenzweig became internet famous for all the wrong reasons, filmed kissing in Central Park by TikTok creator Jay Guapõ.
The clip, which cleared six million views on TikTok, reportedly cost Cullerton his own planned move to Gibson Dunn.
The Big Money Loss for This Lawyer
The Financial Times reported the lateral group was originally meant to number seven; Cullerton (pictured in his Wachtell bio page) was the seventh, and that hire was pulled after the video surfaced. He has since been placed on leave by Wachtell pending an internal review.
Neither firm has commented publicly.
Lost amid the tabloid headlines is the commercial significance of the wider story.
Savitt’s departure, with five other litigation partners, is one of the most consequential lateral raids involving Wachtell in decades. Legal industry observers read it as another sign that even the most prestigious lockstep firms are exposed to rivals willing to pay extraordinary sums for proven rainmakers.
Wachtell, for its part, insists it is performing “at its highest level across every metric” and having a record year. The reassurance would land more softly had its co-chair not just walked.
The romance allegations may attract the clicks, but the lasting story for the industry is the continued erosion of the old BigLaw assumption that elite firms, elite partners and elite clients rarely move.
In 2026, apparently, everything is negotiable. Even discretion.
