Partners at Weil, Gotshal & Manges voted on Tuesday to dissolve the firm after 95 years, formalising the closure of one of Wall Street's most prominent legal names and ending months of speculation over its future.

The vote follows a 28 October board recommendation that the firm should be closed. Bloomberg Law first reported the wind-down decision. The firm did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Who takes control of the dissolution?

A three-person committee will now oversee the wind-down, taking control of the firm away from its partners. The committee comprises:

• Robert Carangelo, the firm's general counsel
• Paul Wessel, chairman of the tax department
• Patricia Ferrari, an independent director who serves as a board member for firms going through bankruptcy, according to the New York Times

The dissolution marks an abrupt reversal for a firm that had been seeking a merger with another US law firm before agreeing to wind down instead. No merger partner was ultimately secured.

How did a $2bn firm collapse?

The fall of the firm has sent shock waves through the legal industry, coming after a year in which Weil generated more than $2bn in revenue. The unravelling accelerated through a sustained exodus of senior partners on both sides of the Atlantic.

In August, former corporate co-managing partner Michael Hickey and private equity co-head Christopher Machera left for US competitor Paul Weiss. In September, the firm lost co-managing partner David Avery-Gee, a renowned M&A dealmaker (mergers and acquisitions), who joined Sullivan & Cromwell in London.

The departures hollowed out the firm's US and City of London leadership within the space of two months, leaving the partnership with little option but to consider dissolution.

Weil was known as a "white-shoe" firm, the traditional label for elite, long-established Wall Street law partnerships.

What do insiders say went wrong?

A former Weil partner described the firm's downfall in stark terms. Speaking to City AM on 29 October, the former partner called the collapse "a Titanic situation" and said it was "probably the worst succession planning in legal history."

The criticism points to a failure of leadership transition at the top of the firm rather than a collapse in underlying business performance. The firm had, after all, booked revenue above $2bn in its most recent full year.

The vote on Tuesday converts months of speculation into a binding decision. Control now passes from the partnership to the three-member committee, which will manage the liquidation of a firm founded almost a century ago.

For the wider legal market, the dissolution of a firm of Weil's scale removes one of the established names from the Wall Street elite and redistributes its remaining lawyers, clients and revenue across competitors that have already absorbed its most senior rainmakers.