Wachtell Lipton's New Partners: 100 Percent Diverse
Good news about diversity at one of the nation's most prestigious and profitable law firms.
Wachtell Lipton’s home, 51 West 52nd Street (by Americasroof via Wikimedia).
Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz, one of the nation’s most prestigious and profitable law firms, is a major meritocracy. It promotes lawyers to partnership based on their talent as attorneys, and it doesn’t go out of its way to enhance diversity in the partner ranks.
When I worked at Wachtell Lipton, the partnership contained very few women, people of color, or other diverse individuals. Instead, many of the partners fit the demographic profile of the founding partners: white Jewish males from top law schools.
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As noted in Jews and the Law (affiliate link), the firm “was founded in 1965 by four young Jewish lawyers who, it was said, had doors at other firms closed to them” as Jews, despite strong records at NYU Law School. I always thought that this experience of discrimination contributed to the partnership’s focus on merit above all with regard to hiring and promotion.
And as we saw with Cravath’s newest partner class, composed entirely of women, focusing on excellence will naturally lead to diversity in 2016. Wachtell Lipton recently announced its new partners — it traditionally holds the vote on Election Day, with partnership effective in January — and the class consists of two women and an openly gay man:
Tijana Dvornic
- Tijana Dvornic: A tax lawyer focused on M&A work (par for the WLRK course), Dvornic joined the firm in 2009, after graduating from Harvard Law School and clerking for Judge Priscilla Owen of the Fifth Circuit (also a former female Biglaw partner, at Andrews & Kurth).
- Jenna Levine: A member of the firm’s marquee corporate practice, Levine graduated from Dartmouth College, worked as an investment banker, and graduated from Columbia Law School, before arriving at Wachtell Lipton in 2008.
- Ryan McLeod: A litigator, McLeod graduated from Ursinus College (summa cum laude) and Duke University School of Law, clerked for Chancellor Chandler of Delaware Chancery Court (a common venue for Wachtell litigators), and joined the firm in 2008.
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Jenna Levine
One tipster described this trio as “superstars,” and added that they reflect a recent trend of diversity in Wachtell Lipton partnership picks.
“If you were to look at our promotions over recent years, you’d see that we hold our own relative to our peers in diversity,” said this source. “For example, close to half of our new partners in corporate are Asian American.”
Ryan McLeod
Congratulations to these three young lawyers on joining one of the nation’s top partnerships. They won’t see much improvement in their hours — as firm co-chair Daniel Neff told David Parnell of Forbes, Wachtell Lipton partners continue to work like dogs are some of the hardest-working in all of Biglaw — but their already large paychecks are about to get an extra zero.
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P.S. If you’re interested in gender diversity in the legal profession, please check out our Law Firm Gender Diversity Index.
Daniel Neff Of Wachtell Lipton: On Leading The Market’s Most Prestigious Law Firm [Forbes]
Earlier: Law Firm Gender Diversity Index
Cravath Names New Partners — And All Three Are Women
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David Lat is the founder and managing editor of Above the Law and the author of Supreme Ambitions: A Novel. He previously worked as a federal prosecutor in Newark, New Jersey; a litigation associate at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz; and a law clerk to Judge Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. You can connect with David on Twitter (@DavidLat), LinkedIn, and Facebook, and you can reach him by email at dlat@abovethelaw.com.
