A 45-year-old partner at one of New York's most elite law firms is losing his career after a TikTok video caught him kissing a 29-year-old junior associate on a Central Park bench, and the fallout keeps growing.
Nathaniel Cullerton, a litigation partner at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, is being forced out of the firm following an internal investigation into his relationship with Kelsey Borenzweig, a junior associate in the same department, the New York Post reported. The separation is underway but not yet official. Cullerton has been on leave since at least July while the firm looked into the matter.
The trouble started last month when a camera-wielding stranger filmed Cullerton and Borenzweig kissing on a park bench and posted the clip to TikTok. The video became an overnight sensation. Within days, Cullerton lost not just his standing at Wachtell but a planned move to rival firm Gibson Dunn, an offer that could have been worth tens of millions of dollars.
Cullerton had been preparing to leave Wachtell alongside Bill Savitt, a 63-year-old litigator who departed last month with five other partners, Sarah Eddy, Anitha Reddy, Randall Jackson, Ryan McLeod, and Brad Wilson, for Gibson Dunn's New York office. The group had helped lead OpenAI's courtroom defense against Elon Musk, and their departure was a major talent raid on one of the legal world's most prestigious firms.
Gibson Dunn guaranteed Savitt $96 million over three years, roughly $32 million annually, according to legal sources, though a source familiar with the situation said that figure "isn't even in the ballpark of close." Whatever the real number, the deal was large enough to pull six partners out of a firm where average partner pay runs $12 million a year.
Cullerton was supposed to be part of that move. Gibson Dunn scrapped his hiring after the video surfaced. The firm did not respond to requests for comment.
So a man earning at least $4 million a year at Wachtell, with a path to something far more lucrative at Gibson Dunn, watched both positions evaporate because he could not maintain basic professional boundaries in a public park.
The exact terms of Cullerton's departure remain murky. One source told the Post he is "being forced out." Another said it "would not be accurate" to say he was "given the axe." Both descriptions point in the same direction: Cullerton is leaving, and not by choice. He remains technically on the firm's rolls, still on leave, while the details of his exit get worked out.
Whether Cullerton is being paid during that leave is unclear. The Post was unable to confirm his compensation status. Borenzweig's employment at Wachtell is also an open question, the firm has not disclosed whether the 29-year-old associate still works there.
Wachtell, Cullerton, and Borenzweig all declined to respond to requests for comment.
The case is not the only recent example of a high-powered professional losing his position after a workplace relationship went public. But the speed and completeness of Cullerton's professional collapse stand out even in a city full of cautionary tales.
Sources told the Post that Wachtell has no formal policy prohibiting consensual relationships between colleagues. That detail makes the firm's investigation more pointed, not less. The issue was not romance in the abstract. The issue was the professional gap between a partner and a junior associate in the same litigation department, a gap in authority, compensation, and career leverage that no amount of mutual consent can erase on an organizational chart.
Cullerton, at 45, sat at the top of the firm's hierarchy. Borenzweig, at 29, sat near the bottom. In a profession built on the premise that power dynamics matter, that clients trust their lawyers to exercise judgment about conflicts of interest, the optics were disqualifying before the TikTok clip ever loaded.
The pattern is familiar across professions. A Missouri prosecutor was recently removed from office partly over romantic entanglements that compromised his professional standing. The common thread is not the relationship itself but the willingness of people in positions of authority to treat their own judgment as exempt from the rules they enforce on everyone else.
Cullerton's situation unfolded against an already messy backdrop. The Post had previously revealed that Savitt himself had been romantically involved with Sarah Eddy while both were partners at Wachtell. Their relationship ended late last month, around the time the group left for Gibson Dunn.
Sources said Savitt had separated from his wife, Nazak Savitt, an interior designer, before the relationship with Eddy began. Eddy had been divorced for roughly a decade and was not Savitt's subordinate, a distinction that separates the Savitt-Eddy situation from the Cullerton-Borenzweig one in at least one critical respect.
Still, two romantic entanglements involving members of the same elite litigation group, surfacing within weeks of each other, painted a picture of a department where professional lines blurred in ways that the legal profession's own standards are supposed to prevent. Powerful men in other fields have faced similar reckonings. Georgia Republicans recently moved to impeach a federal judge over sexual misconduct, and the broader pattern of careers destroyed by inappropriate relationships has become a recurring feature of public life.
Cullerton's wife is a prominent federal prosecutor, a detail that adds a personal dimension the public filings and firm statements cannot capture. The professional cost is calculable, millions in lost compensation, a shattered partnership, a rescinded offer at a rival firm. The personal cost is not.
Several basic facts remain unresolved. When will Cullerton's departure become official? Is he negotiating a financial exit, or simply waiting for the firm to finalize paperwork? What did Wachtell's investigation actually find beyond the obvious, that a partner and a junior associate were in a relationship? And what happens to Borenzweig, the 29-year-old associate whose career may also be over but whose status the firm has not addressed?
None of the parties involved have offered public answers. The silence is itself a kind of answer, the kind that large institutions default to when the facts are bad and the lawyers advising the lawyers have told everyone to stop talking.
The episode also raises a question that powerful figures across industries keep learning the hard way: in an era of smartphone cameras and viral social media, there is no such thing as a private indiscretion in a public park.
Cullerton had every advantage the legal profession offers, a partnership at one of America's most prestigious firms, a salary most Americans cannot imagine, and a path to even greater compensation at a rival. He traded all of it for a kiss on a park bench that a stranger happened to record. The rules apply to everyone. Even the people who write them for a living.
