The firm will remain in business for several months, to protect the interests of its clients, employees and creditors.
Wolf Block has hired the Hildebrandt consulting firm and Leslie D. Corwin, a partner with Greenberg Traurig, to work with firm leadership “to relocate as many people as possible, as promptly as possible, while liquidating the firm’s obligations.”
A large group of Wolf Block lawyers are in talks with Cozen O’Connor about joining the Philadelphia-based firm.
The 300-lawyer Wolf Block was formed in 1903 by Morris Wolf and Horace Stern, two Jewish lawyers who could not get work at Philadelphia’s elite law firms. The firm rose in prominence during the first half of the 20th Century along with the local Jewish business community. It was able to attract some of the nation’s top Jewish law school graduates until other firms changed their hiring practices in the late 1960s.
Last fall, Wolf Block announced it was delaying the start dates for its first-year associates from September to November. And in December, the firm laid off 15 lawyers and staff and then made more cuts earlier this year.