Parts of this article (those related to decades of the firm's history) need to be updated. (July 2025)

The firm was founded in 1965 by Herbert Wachtell and Jerry Kern, who were shortly afterwards joined by Martin Lipton, Leonard Rosen, and George Katz.^[3] The four named partners met at New York University School of Law where they were editors on the New York University Law Review together.^[4] The firm rose to prominence on Wall Street during an era of brokers and investment bankers frequently launching small firms, but received little attention from established white-shoe law firms.^[3]

Martin Lipton, a founding partner in the firm, invented the so-called "poison pill defense" during the 1980s, a shareholders' rights plan designed to foil hostile takeovers.^[3] Acting for both sides of mergers and acquisitions; Wachtell Lipton has represented public companies, including AT&T, Pfizer, and JP Morgan Chase.^[5]

Amid clashes at some college campuses, after the onset of the 2023 Israel-Hamas war; in November 2023, at U.S. law schools, it was among more than two dozen law firms that submitted a letter to 14 American law school deans, denouncing anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and racism, and advising those mentoring future law graduates of entrenched workplace policies against harassment or discrimination at their firms.^[6][7] Previously, the firm was also among 17 global law firm signatories to a public statement denouncing growing anti-Semitic attacks in the U.S. that was published in The American Lawyer in May 2021.^[8]

Notable clients and cases have included Chrysler in the 1970s; the acquisition of Getty Oil by Texaco; and negotiation of the master development agreement for the World Trade Center after the September 11, 2001 attacks.^[2]

The firm has represented clients in precedent-setting Delaware corporate governance cases in which the "poison pill" defense was upheld, including, in 1985, Moran v. Household International, Inc., with the court deeming Household International's defense as a "legitimate exercise of business judgment";^[9] Paramount Communications, Inc. v. Time Inc., in 1989;^[10] and, in 2011, Air Products and Chemicals Inc. v. Airgas, Inc., with a judge upholding its shareholder rights plan as defense against a hostile takeover of Airgas.^[11]

During the 2020s, the firm represented Capital One, in its $35.3 billion acquisition of Discover Financial,^[12] and OpenAI in the largest private tech fund-raising round in history.^[13][2]

As of 2025, The American Lawyer's 2025 Am Law 100 ranks Wachtell first among all U.S. firms in profits per lawyer, with profits per equity partner (PPEP) just over US$9 million.^[14]

• William T. Allen, of counsel — former Chancellor of the Delaware Court of Chancery; New York University School of Law professor
• Anthony J. Casey, associate — University of Chicago Law School professor
• James Cole, partner — Acting Deputy Secretary of Education
• Allison Christians, associate — H. Heward Stikeman chair in Taxation, McGill University Faculty of Law
• George T. Conway III, associate and partner — lawyer for Paula Jones in sexual harassment lawsuit against President Bill Clinton; founder of The Lincoln Project
• Chris Deluzio, associate – U.S. Representative
• Miguel Estrada — attorney and former judicial nominee
• Glenn Greenwald, associate — political activist, journalist, and Pulitzer Prize recipient^[15]
• Maura R. Grossman, of counsel — research professor and former director of Women in Computer Science at the University of Waterloo; electronic discovery attorney^[16]
• Elizabeth Holtzman, associate — former U.S. Representative and Brooklyn District Attorney
• Robert J. Jackson Jr., associate — Commissioner of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
• David Lat, associate — blogger, Underneath Their Robes and Above the Law
• Kenneth K. Lee, associate — judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit^[17]
• Matt Levine, associate — attorney, investment banker, and writer^[18]
• Robert Morgenthau, of counsel — former New York County District Attorney^[19]
• Bernard Nussbaum, partner — former White House Counsel to President Bill Clinton
• George Postolos, associate — former president and CEO of Houston Rockets
• Samuel Rascoff, associate — New York University School of Law professor
• Jed Rubenfeld, associate — Yale Law School professor
• Andrew Schlafly, associate — founder of Conservapedia, General Counsel for Association of American Physicians and Surgeons^[20]
• Richard J. Sullivan, associate — judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit^[21]
• Leo E. Strine Jr., of counsel – former Chief Justice of the Delaware Supreme Court, Chancellor of the Delaware Court of Chancery; University of Pennsylvania Law School professor
• Sheena Wright, associate – former CEO of United Way of New York City, Deputy Mayor of New York City under Eric Adams

• List of largest law firms by profits per partner