Adam O. Emmerich practices in Wachtell Lipton’s corporate department, focusing primarily on mergers and acquisitions, securities law matters, and corporate governance. His practice has included a broad and varied representation of public and private corporations and other entities in a variety of industries throughout the United States and abroad in connection with mergers and acquisitions, divestitures, spin-offs, joint ventures, and financing transactions. He also has extensive experience in takeover defense. Adam is recognized as one 500 leading lawyers in America by Lawdragon, as one of the world’s leading lawyers in the field of Mergers and Acquisitions in the Chambers guide to the world’s leading lawyers, as an expert in each of M&A, Corporate Governance and M&A in the real estate field by Who’s Who Legal?, and as an expert both in M&A and in Corporate Governance by Euromoney Institutional Investor’s Guides, respectively, to the World’s Leading Mergers and Acquisitions and Corporate Governance Lawyers.

Adam joined the firm in 1986 and was named a partner in 1991. He attended Swarthmore College and The University of Chicago, from which he received his J.D. with honors. While at the University of Chicago, Adam served as Topics and Comments Editor of The University of Chicago Law Review, was elected to the Order of the Coif, and received an Olin Fellowship in law and economics. Following law school, he served as a law clerk to Judge Abner J. Mikva, of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He is a frequent author and speaker on topics relating to mergers and acquisitions and corporate governance, including at MIT’s Sloan Convocation and on India’s CNBC-TV18.

Adam is co-chair of the International Institute for the Study of Cross-Border M&A, co-chair of the advisory board of New York University's REIT Center for the Study of Public Real Estate Companies and has served as co-chair of the NYU Real Estate Institute's Annual Symposium on REITs for the last 16 years. He is a member of the Corporate Academic Bridge Group of the NYU Pollack Center for Law & Business, and a frequent guest contributor to the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation. Adam serves on the board of directors of the American Friends of the Israel Museum and of the Ramaz School, as well as serving as president of the Friends of the Israel Antiquities Authority and of the Friends of Rambam Medical Center. He has previously served on the board of directors of the Lawyers Alliance for New York, the Visiting Committee of the University of Chicago Law School, and as co-chair of the Young Lawyers Division of the UJA-Federation in New York.