New York’s Stroock & Stroock & Lavan is going out of business after exits gutted the law firm and merger talks with competitors fell through.
The firm’s partners have already voted to dissolve the firm, co-managing partners Jeff Keitelman and Alan Klinger said in an internal email Monday. Stroock’s executive committee will implement that plan, the pair said in the email.
Roughly 30 partners in the Manhattan law firm’s vaunted real estate practice are bolting for Hogan Lovells. That cut Stroock’s remaining partnership ranks roughly in half.
News of the mass exit came one day after Stroock and Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw & Pittman announced they had called off merger talks.
Stroock has been on the ropes since a group of more than 40 bankruptcy lawyers left for rival Paul Hastings more than a year ago. That decimated the firm’s other major practice group outside of real estate, which Stroock had struggled to rebuild.
The firm had for months discussed potential tie-ups with a number of rivals, including Steptoe & Johnson, McGuireWoods, and Squire Patton Boggs. Stroock and Nixon Peabody said in July that they were walking away from merger talks.
The firm’s pension obligations—at one point exceeding $8 million per year—were said to be among the stumbling blocks in merger talks.
The American Lawyer first reported the dissolution.
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