There have been plenty of law firm failures over the years. For instance, there was a run on closures thanks to the Great Recession, and Dewey & LeBoeuf's 2012 failure send shockwaves throughout the industry.

But when Weil, Gotshal & Manges announced last month that it would be winding down operations, it felt different compared to the others before.

After all, many of the BigLaw firms that went out of the business during the Great Recession had been overexposed in certain areas, and when the housing market crashed, so did their business. Dewey’s failure happened for a lot of reasons, mainly due to big money guarantees to partners, an ill-advised merger, and alleged financial irregularities that resulted in criminal indictments.

Weil Gotshal, though, had long been a firm with one of the best reputations on Wall Street, let alone the world. How did a firm like that end up joining the others on the dustheap? And could technology play a role in helping other firms avoid such a fate in the future?

In this episode of the Legal Rebels Podcast, Noah Waisberg talks to the ABA Journal’s Victor Li about those and other topics. Waisberg is the co-founder and the CEO of Zuva—an artificial intelligence contract analysis platform—and a longtime advocate of using technology to review contracts. He’s also a former Weil Gotshal associate, having worked there as a summer associate in 2005 and then as an associate from 2006 to 2010.

See also:

Rivals race to rescue Weil Gotshal lawyers as firm heads toward closure

Weil Gotshal to wind down in shock fall for heavyweight firm