Nathaniel D. Cullerton and Kelsey Borenzweig Smooching

Two Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz attorneys caught smooching on a Central Park Bench

NEW YORK — On a Thursday afternoon in Central Park, two Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz litigators conducted what can only be described as an unauthorized oral argument on a public bench.

Nathaniel D. Cullerton, 45, a married litigation partner, and Kelsey Borenzweig, 29, an associate in the same department, were filmed July 23 locked in a kiss so committed that her legs were draped over his thigh. TikToker Jay Guapõ walked up, invoked the ancient common-law principle of “Get a room. There’s kids around,” and turned a lunch-hour clinch into several million views.

Both lawyers had worked on Wachtell’s team defending OpenAI and Sam Altman against Elon Musk. Cullerton has been married since 2016 to Moira Penza, a partner at another New York firm and a former federal prosecutor. The couple owns a $2.3 million Upper East Side co-op. None of that, apparently, suggested a hotel.

The professional fallout was not a joke.

Cullerton was placed on leave while Wachtell investigated. He had been slated to follow star litigator Bill Savitt and a cluster of Wachtell litigators to Gibson Dunn. After the video spread, Gibson Dunn withdrew the offer. Sources later told the New York Post that Wachtell is forcing him out. As of late August he was still technically employed and on leave; people familiar with the matter said the split is underway.

Borenzweig’s status has not been publicly confirmed. That silence is its own kind of Big Law poetry: the partner’s name, marriage, pay, and exit are in the papers. The associate’s next chapter is not.

This was not a crime and not a forced act. It was two consenting adults who looked, from the footage, extremely interested in each other — and extremely uninterested in the concept of a door. Passion is allowed. A partner–associate romance in the same litigation group, conducted in daylight twenty blocks from the office, filmed by a stranger with a following, is a different filing.

A brief advisory to every other profession

Doctors: the on-call room has a lock. Use it.
Bankers: the conference room glass is not one-way.
Teachers: the faculty lounge is still a workplace.
Clergy: we are not even going to finish that sentence.
Lawyers: you bill in six-minute increments. You can find six minutes and a room with a door.

If you must review each other’s work after hours, do it where children, TikTok, and the New York Post are not also reviewing it. Central Park is many things. It is not a conflicts waiver.

The internet will always have a camera. Your firm will always have a policy. Your spouse will always have Google. And if someone yells “Get a room,” the correct response is not a smile and a wave. It is to have already gotten one.