Restructuring/finance group poached en masse. Litigation poached en masse. People making out in Bryant Park (could have been billing). This stuff is all downstream of the lockstep partnership model being out-of-date (even CSM admitted as much after similar issues last decade) and the firms’ uneasy marriage between M&A, allied practices, and everything else.
Marty held that shit together by, first of all, being so insanely commercially successful that he could drown dissent in oceans of money, and, second of all, commanding immense personal respect from everyone in the industry except Lucian Bebchuk. Marty and his partners were like Napoleon and his Maréchaux, except they never had a Waterloo. Wachtell people would breathlessly describe the firm as a cult (Marty literally would call it his family)—and mean that in a good way.
Many wondered what would happen when he (and Herb) got too old to handle day-to-day work. Now we know.