Power Points: The rainmakers went to Cravath, Paul Weiss and Skadden. Now three AI-native firms want the brand, the precedents and whichever lawyers are still looking for a desk.
Weil, Gotshal & Manges has not finished dying, but the estate sale has already drawn a new breed of competitor showing interest in the firm’s ‘catalog’.
The latest is Scissero (delightfully described a ‘legal tech with lawyers built in’). Founder and CEO Mathias Strasser (pictured above) told Artificial Lawyer that the firm has formally expressed interest in Weil’s technology, intellectual property and data, including its DealVision 360 platform.
Scissero is also talking to several Weil lawyers, and to private equity firms interested in backing a transactional practice built around them. The firm bought Robin AI’s managed legal services business in December 2025, after Robin failed to raise funding and went up for distressed sale. Picking through the wreckage is becoming something of a specialty.
There are others circling too. Two-year-old Crosby has bid for Weil’s trademark, brand and some unspecified internal data while trying to hire its lawyers, TechCrunch confirmed after The Information broke the story.
The are bidding for what could not walk out of the door, namely the forms, the playbooks, the data and the name. Expressions of interest are not acquisitions, and no transfer of Weil’s assets has been announced.
Crosby has raised about $85 million, or roughly 4% of the $2.078 billion Weil generated in revenue last year.
Then there is Vetta, the so-called ‘new mod firm’ in London firm and launched only in September by former Latham & Watkins lawyer Nic Vetta (above). Artificial Lawyer understands it wants Weil’s precedents, playbooks, knowledge-management infrastructure and related technology, along with lawyers. Its pitch to them is a firm with “no billable hour targets and no leverage pyramid to feed”.
What is a dead firm’s data worth?
Nobody has published a price for Weil’s. The nearest benchmark comes from an airline. In August, Google won a bankruptcy auction for Spirit Airlines’ internal data with a $10 million bid, beating Mercor’s $7.5 million offer.
Most US jurisdictions follow the ABA model in protecting all information relating to a client’s representation, and that protection does not lapse because a firm has.
Strasser concedes the point, saying know-how, aggregated market data and confidential client documents each need separate assessment, with client consent where necessary. Other bidders appear confident that precedents stripped of client and deal details can be used, which is something they will want to be right.
The brand may be harder still. New York’s ethics authorities have long treated a firm name as potentially misleading where it includes a lawyer with no continuing line of succession to the firm. Whether Crosby intends to practise under the Weil name has not been reported, but buying a trademark and being entitled to practise under it may turn out to be different questions.
So the bidders are not buying what made Weil valuable. That left in September with its client relationships.
That may still be worth having. Precedents have become more useful now that software can digest them, which is why Kirkland brought in Palantir to work its own data for private equity. A partner with a book of business might also start to wonder what the other 1,199 lawyers were for. Nic Vetta argues that more partners will eventually ask whether they need a large firm at all.
Time – and new age law firms – will tell, we guess.
