Winston & Strawn spent the better part of the last year building toward a splashy transatlantic merger with U.K. firm Taylor Wessing. The partner vote came back overwhelmingly in favor, and the combination officially closed earlier this month, birthing the newly minted Winston Taylor on June 1. The combined firm boasts more than 1,400 lawyers and north of $1.75 billion in revenue. Congratulations are presumably in order.
And yet, somewhere between the partner vote and the champagne, a significant number of Texas partners seem to have decided this particular party wasn’t for them.
Law.com has tracked more than a dozen departures from Winston’s Lone Star State offices since February, with a particular concentration in Dallas. The firm’s co-managing partner for Dallas, Brett Johnson, offered the standard-issue merger-era reassurance — attrition happens, most partners voted yes, exciting times ahead — but the volume here is unusual enough to warrant more than a shrug.
The departures started in earnest in February, when a nine-partner litigation group led by prominent Dallas trial lawyer Tom Melsheimer jumped to King & Spalding. That group alone would have been a significant hit for any firm’s Texas litigation bench. But King & Spalding didn’t stop there. Over the following months, additional Winston partners in Dallas followed, including LeElle Slifer, who had served as global co-chair of Winston’s general litigation practice, along with several colleagues. The firm also picked up a pair of finance and restructuring partners from Winston in April.
It wasn’t just King & Spalding doing the shopping. Latham & Watkins — which is opening a Dallas office — nabbed two Dallas litigators in February. Paul Hastings picked up two capital markets and public company advisory partners earlier this month. In Houston, Bracewell snagged two energy partners including Kevin Brophy, who co-chaired Winston’s energy and infrastructure practice; Yetter Coleman, Clifford Chance, and Latham all added Houston litigation talent as well.
The official line from the firm is measured. “Like most firms, we experience attrition — often at the end of our fiscal year,” Johnson said. “The overwhelming majority of our partners in Texas voted in favor of the combination.”
A former Winston partner, speaking anonymously to Law.com, put it plainly: the volume is unusual, even if there’s no single clean explanation tying it all to the deal. “It’s not directly related to the merger,” they said, “just perhaps related to the sense it made people evaluate where they saw things in their careers.” That’s a pretty honest account of how these things work, a merger doesn’t always cause the departures but it can creates the occasion for them.
Winston Taylor is quick to point out it’s not just watching partners leave. The firm has added lateral partners in Dallas in recent months, including IP litigators from Baker Botts and Sidley Austin. Johnson says more IP hiring is forthcoming and that the firm is continuing to build in California, New York, and Washington, D.C. as well.
So the picture isn’t one of freefall; it’s more complicated than that. Winston Taylor is now a transatlantic giant, but its Texas footprint is a question the market is currently answering in real time.
Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Bluesky @Kathryn1
The post Winston’s Texas Two-Step: More Than A Dozen Lone Star Partners Have Headed For The Exits appeared first on Above the Law.
Winston & Strawn spent the better part of the last year building toward a splashy transatlantic merger with U.K. firm Taylor Wessing. The partner vote came back overwhelmingly in favor, and the combination officially closed earlier this month, birthing the newly minted Winston Taylor on June 1. The combined firm boasts more than 1,400 lawyers and north of $1.75 billion in revenue. Congratulations are presumably in order.
And yet, somewhere between the partner vote and the champagne, a significant number of Texas partners seem to have decided this particular party wasn’t for them.
Law.com has tracked more than a dozen departures from Winston’s Lone Star State offices since February, with a particular concentration in Dallas. The firm’s co-managing partner for Dallas, Brett Johnson, offered the standard-issue merger-era reassurance — attrition happens, most partners voted yes, exciting times ahead — but the volume here is unusual enough to warrant more than a shrug.
The departures started in earnest in February, when a nine-partner litigation group led by prominent Dallas trial lawyer Tom Melsheimer jumped to King & Spalding. That group alone would have been a significant hit for any firm’s Texas litigation bench. But King & Spalding didn’t stop there. Over the following months, additional Winston partners in Dallas followed, including LeElle Slifer, who had served as global co-chair of Winston’s general litigation practice, along with several colleagues. The firm also picked up a pair of finance and restructuring partners from Winston in April.
It wasn’t just King & Spalding doing the shopping. Latham & Watkins — which is opening a Dallas office — nabbed two Dallas litigators in February. Paul Hastings picked up two capital markets and public company advisory partners earlier this month. In Houston, Bracewell snagged two energy partners including Kevin Brophy, who co-chaired Winston’s energy and infrastructure practice; Yetter Coleman, Clifford Chance, and Latham all added Houston litigation talent as well.
The official line from the firm is measured. “Like most firms, we experience attrition — often at the end of our fiscal year,” Johnson said. “The overwhelming majority of our partners in Texas voted in favor of the combination.”
A former Winston partner, speaking anonymously to Law.com, put it plainly: the volume is unusual, even if there’s no single clean explanation tying it all to the deal. “It’s not directly related to the merger,” they said, “just perhaps related to the sense it made people evaluate where they saw things in their careers.” That’s a pretty honest account of how these things work, a merger doesn’t always cause the departures but it can creates the occasion for them.
Winston Taylor is quick to point out it’s not just watching partners leave. The firm has added lateral partners in Dallas in recent months, including IP litigators from Baker Botts and Sidley Austin. Johnson says more IP hiring is forthcoming and that the firm is continuing to build in California, New York, and Washington, D.C. as well.
So the picture isn’t one of freefall; it’s more complicated than that. Winston Taylor is now a transatlantic giant, but its Texas footprint is a question the market is currently answering in real time.
Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Bluesky @Kathryn1
