Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison has hired Blake Rohrbacher as a partner in its Litigation Department, resident in the firm’s Wilmington office, marking one of the more significant Delaware corporate litigation laterals of the year.
Rohrbacher joins from the largest Wilmington-based firm, where he began his career and built his practice around complex Delaware Court of Chancery litigation and related advisory work. He brings first-chair experience representing companies, boards and special committees in governance and fiduciary-duty litigation for clients including Oracle, Boeing, BlackBerry and Verizon.
Paul Weiss Chairman Scott A. Barshay described the hire as strengthening the firm’s capacity to serve its Delaware corporate client base, while Andre G. Bouchard, a Litigation Department partner and former chancellor of the Delaware Court of Chancery, called Rohrbacher one of the most influential practitioners in Delaware corporate law and advisory work.
Rohrbacher sits on the Court of Chancery Rules Committee by appointment of the chancellor and has contributed directly to amendments to the Delaware General Corporation Law and to the drafting of the Delaware Rapid Arbitration Act, giving him a rulemaking role alongside his advocacy practice.
The hire reflects an intensifying contest among Am Law firms for Chancery-facing litigators, as boards and special committees increasingly route high-stakes governance and M&A disputes to counsel with direct experience before Delaware’s specialist court.
Firms competing for this work have leaned on lateral recruitment rather than internal promotion to build bench strength quickly, and a partner who has both litigated before the Chancery and helped shape its procedural rules is a distinct credential in that market.
Rohrbacher’s academic credentials, including a Yale Law School JD and recognition as a Chambers USA Band 1 practitioner and Legal 500 leading partner in M&A litigation, reinforce the signalling value of the move for clients assessing counsel in contested transactions.
General counsel weighing outside litigation counsel in Delaware increasingly look beyond trial record alone. Rohrbacher’s seat on the Court of Chancery Rules Committee gives Paul Weiss a credential tied directly to how the court’s own procedures are shaped, not just how cases are argued before it — a distinction boards and special committees are likely to notice when selecting advisers for governance disputes.
The hire expands Paul Weiss’s roster of Wilmington-based litigators with direct involvement in Chancery rulemaking, alongside courtroom experience representing companies including Oracle, Boeing, BlackBerry and Verizon. Companies currently defending or contemplating Chancery litigation, particularly in fiduciary-duty or activist-challenge matters, should expect Paul Weiss to feature more prominently in pitches for board-level and special-committee representation in the months ahead.