Richard B. Levin

Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP
New York, NY

Richard Levin is a partner in Cravath’s Corporate Department and serves as the Chair of its Restructuring practice. His practice focuses on creditors’ rights, insolvency, reorganization and bankruptcy.

Mr. Levin has negotiated and structured complex domestic and international transactions involving distressed or insolvent companies and guided corporate debtors, creditors and acquirers through Chapter 11 and out-of-court restructurings both in negotiated resolutions and in litigation. His clients have included companies in the manufacturing, auto, technology, energy, utility, financial, telecommunications, real estate, restaurant, retail, gaming and agricultural industries.

Mr. Levin was counsel to a subcommittee of the House Judiciary
Committee from 1975 to 1978, where he was one of the primary authors of the 1978 Bankruptcy Code. He currently serves as Chair of the National Bankruptcy Conference and is a Fellow of the American College of Bankruptcy. Mr. Levin has served as a consultant to the World Bank and to the Central Bank of Brazil regarding Brazil’s 2005 bankruptcy legislation, as Faculty at the Federal Judicial Center’s Bankruptcy Judge Workshops since 2002, and as a Lecturer in Law at Harvard Law School. He is a frequent lecturer on bankruptcy law in continuing legal education programs and is a regularly published author in the legal press.

Mr. Levin has been repeatedly cited as one of the country’s leading practitioners of bankruptcy and creditor-debtor rights law by, among others, Chambers USA: America’s Leading Lawyers for Business from 2009 through 2014; Chambers Global: The World’s Leading Lawyers for Business in 2013 and 2014; The Legal 500 from 2009 through 2014; IFLR1000: The Guide to the World’s Leading Financial Law Firms from 2013 through 2015; The Best Lawyers in America from 2007 through 2015; The International Who’s Who of Insolvency & Restructuring Lawyers; the Guide to the World’s Leading Insolvency and Restructuring Lawyers in the 9th edition; and the K&A Restructuring Register America’s Top 100, a peer listing of bankruptcy experts, in its 2002 through 2007 and 2009 through 2011 editions. He was ranked number one among the practitioners in the New York Metro area by Super Lawyers in 2014. Mr. Levin was named in Lawdragon’s 500 Leading Lawyers in America from 2007 through 2010 and has been ranked in Benchmark Litigation as a National Star and as a Local Litigation (NY) Star in Bankruptcy from 2012 through 2015. He was also recognized by The Legal 500 for his work in municipal bankruptcy from 2012 through 2014.

Mr. Levin received an S.B. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1972 and a J.D. from Yale Law School in 1975, where he was an Editor of the Yale Law Journal.