Three partners in the bankruptcy group at the law firm Cadwalader Wickersham & Taft are leaving to join O’Melveny & Myers.
O’Melveny announced Tuesday that it hired the co-chairs of the bankruptcy practice, John Rapisardi and George Davis, as well as Peter Friedman, a Cadwalader partner based in Washington.
The move highlights an accelerating revolving door at the country’s largest law firms, with partners increasingly hopping from firm to firm. It was about six years ago that the lawyers joined Cadwalader from Weil, Gotshal & Manges.
The hiring is a coup for O’Melveny. The Cadwalader team has handled a number of high-profile assignments in recent years, including representing the United States Treasury Department and President Obama’s task force in the bankruptcies of Chrysler and General Motors.
They also served as counsel to LyondellBasell in the petrochemical giant’s bankruptcy proceeding.
O’Melveny has been an aggressive hire of lateral partners, including its acquisition last year of five corporate partners from Dewey & LeBoeuf, the law firm that collapsed last year. It also brought on Michael J. Schiavone, a capital markets lawyer formerly at Shearman & Sterling.
Based in New York, Mr. Rapisardi and Mr. Davis will become global heads of O’Melveny’s bankruptcy and restructuring practice. Mr. Friedman will continue to work out of Washington.
Their departure comes just a few months after the firm brought on James C. Woolery, a former senior investment banker at JPMorgan Chase and onetime partner at Cravath, Swaine & Moore, as its deputy chairman.
Cadwalader issued a statement wishing their departing partners well, and announcing that Gregory M. Petrick and Mark C. Ellenberg would become the bankruptcy department’s new co-chairs.
