District of Columbia

Firm overview

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Hunton Andrews Kurth is a global law firm with over 900 lawyers handling a range of complex transactional, litigation, and regulatory matters for clients in many industries, including energy, financial services, real estate, retail and consumer products, and technology. With offices across the US and in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, the firm is aligned with clients’ businesses and committed to delivering exceptional service. Our full-service litigation practice is one of the largest in the country, with particular depth in key litigation markets such as Texas, California, New York, Florida, and Virginia and the Mid-Atlantic. 

Since its founding more than 100 years ago, Hunton Andrews Kurth has been a business-focused firm, an approach we continue in today’s litigation-focused climate. Our team of more than 400 litigators draw upon decades of experience to handle all aspects of disputes with the goal of achieving successful results whether in a courtroom or the boardroom. 

Our skilled litigators focus on strategy from the outset and develop individualized litigation plans that are comprehensive in scope, mindful of each client’s business and legal goals, and aligned with client needs. We aggressively and efficiently represent clients at different phases of their corporate life cycles. Whether advising a start-up in patent litigation or a Fortune 100 company in a bet-the-company class action, we apply the same principles of client-focused representation to achieve the desired result. 

Litigation Overview: Hunton Andrews Kurth has a top global litigation team, having litigated and/or arbitrated in all 50 states and many foreign countries. We often serve as national or worldwide coordinating counsel. Our diverse team has the collective knowledge, skill, and experience to help businesses identify and manage risks, respond to existing or threatened litigation, and pursue resolution in any venue. Hunton Andrews Kurth attorneys are admitted to the American College of Trial Lawyers and ranked by publications such as Chambers USA, Legal 500, and Benchmark Litigation, and the firm is named one of the “most feared firms in litigation” by BTI. 

We handle litigation matters in the energy, financial services, healthcare, telecommunications, food, hospitality, consumer products, and retail industries, tailoring strategy on a case-by-case basis. Our commercial litigation docket includes class action defense, commercial contract issues, white collar defense, administrative matters, cybersecurity and privacy investigations, and appeals in state and federal courts. We represent corporations and other entities across a broad range of complex matters – from providing advice and counsel about business disputes and torts to civil litigation, trial, and appeal. We are often engaged in “bet-the-company” cases, multidistrict litigation, and coordinated state law proceedings. Our lawyers have the experience to handle cases that involve multiple adversaries in courts across the nation and abroad. 

In addition, the firm’s environmental team, with more than 45 environmental attorneys and scientists, many of whom are former DOJ attorneys and senior regulatory agency officials, handles high-profile environmental litigation matters. These include enforcement defense, permit litigation, and challenges to environmental regulatory programs before federal district and appeals courts and the US Supreme Court, addressing issues of nationwide significance.

Updated Aug 2024

Firm overview

Freshfields is a leading global law firm with over 275 years’ experience advising the world’s most prestigious corporations and financial institutions. We pride ourselves on being a top-tier litigation department with a unique combination of subject-matter knowledge, local presence and strategic foresight.

The Freshfields litigation team represents a diverse set of US and global clients, across numerous industries and sectors, who face billions of dollars in potential exposure. Our clients include many of the world’s most recognizable brands and our roster continues to grow as clients increasingly find themselves in need of sophisticated counsel.

Our team of attorneys brings efficient and innovative solutions to our clients’ most pressing legal challenges. As a critical component of the world’s premier international litigation practice, our US litigators routinely handle complex multijurisdictional and cross-border matters and are alert to the specific concerns and collateral consequences of disputes in non-US regions as well as with global regulators.

We have unrivalled experience defending businesses across a range of industries, and by leveraging our 800-strong global litigation team we excel in complex cases that span multiple jurisdictions within and outside the United States. Our team includes nine former senior litigators from the Department of Justice and United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York and senior counsel from the Department of Defense, National Security Agency, U.S. Senate, U.S. House of Representatives, and the Office of the White House Counsel who together have decades of experience taking dozens of federal and state trials to verdict—an invaluable weapon in securing the best outcomes for our clients.

Practice areas & sector specializations:

• Anti-Corruption and FCPA
• Antitrust Litigation
• Bankruptcy Litigation
• Commercial Litigation
• Crisis Management and Regulatory Risk
• Cybersecurity and Data Privacy
• Economic Sanctions
• International Arbitration
• Internal Investigations
• Congressional Investigations
• Regulatory Enforcement and Investigations
• Securities and Shareholder Litigation
• White Collar Criminal Defense

Updated Sep 2024

Firm overview

Sullivan & Cromwell LLP provides the highest quality legal advice and representation to clients around the world. The results the firm achieves have set it apart for more than 140 years and have become a model for the modern practice of law. Today, S&C is a leader in each of its core practice areas and in each of its geographic markets. The firm advises a diverse range of clients on major domestic and cross-border M&A and corporate finance transactions, high-stakes litigation and corporate investigations and complex regulatory, tax and estate planning matters. Headquartered in New York, S&C comprises more than 875 lawyers who serve clients around the world through a network of 13 offices, located in leading financial centers in Asia, Australia, Europe and the United States.

Main Areas of Practice:

Antitrust: Sullivan & Cromwell represents clients across a broad array of industries and in multiple jurisdictions in merger clearances, criminal antitrust investigations and civil litigation. The firm handles merger clearances for some of the largest and most complex M&A transactions in the world. 

Capital Markets: S&C leads global rankings in both volume and value of offerings and on its ability to structure novel and effective transactions in the representation of issuers, underwriters, selling and controlling shareholders, and other market participants globally.

Corporate Governance: S&C’s corporate governance practice draws from across the firm’s preeminent practice areas for a thorough understanding of evolving corporate governance requirements and practices. 

Estates & Personal: S&C provides comprehensive and customized service to individuals, families, trustees and charitable institutions on a range of sensitive business and personal affairs. The practice includes all aspects of non-US and US transactional matters, and cross-border trusts and estates litigation.

Executive Compensation/ERISA: S&C advises on a full range of corporate, securities, tax and employment law matters. The firm’s lawyers represent many of the largest global companies on employment arrangements, corporate governance, succession matters and incentive compensation plan design, as well as senior executives in negotiations.

Financial Services: S&C remains the leading global law firm on transactional, regulatory, enforcement and other matters affecting financial institutions. The firm’s expertise extends to clients in the banking; broker-dealer; commodities; futures and derivatives; insurance; and investment management sectors. 

Intellectual Property & Technology: S&C assists clients globally with the full spectrum of intellectual property and technology issues, including in significant M&A transactions, complex patent and other IP disputes, as well as in licensing matters.

Investment Management: S&C combines a traditional investment management and an alternative investment management practice to provide expertise in transactional, structuring, trading, advisory and regulatory matters. 

Litigation: S&C’s litigators take a global, multidisciplinary approach to every aspect of litigation and regulatory matters, making it the go-to firm for cross-border litigation, a practice strengthened by S&C’s stellar reputation as a corporate, financial and transactional firm.

Mergers & Acquisitions: S&C mobilizes teams of lawyers worldwide for clients
on their largest and most important domestic and cross-border M&A transactions.
A perennial leader in M&A, S&C ranks first by value among law firms over the last 20 years, having acted in over $9 trillion in announced transactions worldwide.

Private Equity: S&C’s private equity practice draws upon the integrated resources and efforts of S&C offices around the world, taking advantage of the firm’s preeminent global capabilities to advise private equity firms, family offices, sovereign wealth funds and other investors of private capital on their most important and complex acquisitions, strategic investments and exits, across a broad range of industries.

Project Development & Finance; Infrastructure: S&C is a leader in project and infrastructure development and finance. The firm has advised on many of the most transformative and complex projects and financings in both developed and emerging markets, including advising clients in joint venture arrangements, M&A, restructurings and public-private partnerships.

Real Estate: S&C’s real estate group combines public/private market expertise and innovative deal-making skills to assist clients in purchasing, selling, developing and financing real estate companies and assets worldwide, and represents clients in restructuring real estate and other assets to facilitate generational transition and/or resolve disputes. 

Restructuring & Bankruptcy: S&C is unique in its ability to handle all elements of a corporate restructuring—whether or not an insolvency proceeding is used as a tool.

Tax: S&C’s tax group has a global reputation for innovative tax planning, the successful resolution of tax controversies and providing pivotal tax advice on corporate transactions.

Updated September 2024

Firm overview

Founded less than two years ago, Groombridge, Wu, Baughman & Stone LLP is already widely recognized as one of the nation’s leading patent litigation firms. Our partners have worked together for many years, most recently as the majority of Paul Weiss’s patent litigation group and have a combined 165 years of experience in trials and patent litigation. From small molecules to biologics, from manufacturing to purification to commercial scale-up, and in single-cell sequencing, GPS, medical devices, semiconductors, satellites, and network technologies, we have deep substantive expertise in both the law and in the science. Our lawyers are known for their rapport with juries and judges, for the care and devotion with which they approach their clients, for the scientific expertise they bring, and for their thought leadership in patent law and policy.

The firm’s devotion to clients, commitment to collegiality and diversity, and growing string of victories have propelled it from 21 lawyers at its inception to 32 lawyers today, and from four partners to 10. Founded with offices in New York and Washington, D.C., Groombridge Wu’s success has driven geographic expansion; the firm opened an office in Tokyo’s Marunouchi business hub in December 2023, bringing on long-time Japan-based patent litigator Maxwell (“Mac”) Fox. This firm’s success has not gone unnoticed: it has already been named Benchmark Litigation’s Intellectual Property Law Firm of the Year and shortlisted for that honor by both Chambers USA and Managing IP. Groombridge Wu was also named the 2024 Inter Partes Firm of the Year by LMG Life Sciences and was selected as a Litigation Department of the Year finalist by the New York Law Journal, not to mention dozens of individual recognitions for its partners, such as all partners being named to the Lawdragon List of 500 Leading Litigators of America, and LMG Life Sciences naming Megan Raymond as 2024 Inter Partes Lawyer of the Year.

The firm handles the most significant innovations in the life sciences sector, including, among many others, representing Novo Nordisk in district court and PTAB proceedings involving Ozempic® and Wegovy®, the revolutionary diabetes and weight loss treatments; 10x Genomics in district court and PTAB proceedings concerning 10x’s groundbreaking technology for single-cell DNA and RNA sequencing; Amgen in numerous cases concerning biologic products; Genentech in several high-stakes matters involving its breakthrough cancer and hemophilia treatments; Acuitas in a district court proceeding involving Comirnaty®, Pfizer and BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine, for which Acuitas invented the “lipid nanoparticle” that is used to protect and deliver the mRNA; and Fennec in a district court proceeding involving Pedmark® (sodium thiosulfate injection), the only FDA-approved treatment for the prevention of ototoxicity (i.e., deafness) in children with localized, non-metastatic tumors who receive cisplatin chemotherapy. The firm’s expertise spans far beyond the life sciences sector as well, representing, for example, Nearmap in Federal Circuit, district court, and PTAB proceedings involving aerial imagery technology.

The firm also has unsurpassed experience before, and insights into, the PTAB—critical expertise demanded by our marquee technology, biotechnology and pharmaceutical clients. The team includes the country’s preeminent PTAB lawyers, Steve Baughman and Megan Raymond, who have been pioneering trial practice at the PTAB since its first minutes of operation in 2012 and have continuously appeared of record before the PTAB in hundreds of high-stakes proceedings on behalf of both petitioners and patent owners. Our preeminence in intricate, franchise-threatening disputes—typically spanning multiple forums—drives our continued growth. We also have extensive experience in ex parte re-examinations.

Beyond the courtroom, Groombridge Wu partners are leaders in the legal community. Jennifer H. Wu is the president of the Federal Circuit Bar Association (FCBA) president, a position that Nick Groombridge previously held. Jennifer is also a member of the NYU School of Law Board of Trustees, and a member of the board of the Asian American Bar Association of New York (AABANY). Nick and Eric Stone have co-taught Patent Litigation at New York University School of Law. Steve Baughman helped create and is past president of the PTAB Bar Association; Megan Raymond is the association’s current vice-president and is the primary author of PLI’s Post-Grant Proceedings Before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board. Megan also serves on the steering committee of WIN DC (Women in IP Network) and chairs the FCBA’s Patent Litigation Committee. Jennifer Rea Deneault is a junior board member of the New York Intellectual Property Law Association and chairs its membership committee. She is also vice chair of the Patent Litigation Committee for the FCBA. Jenny C. Wu is chair of the Diversity Committee and vice chair of the Mock Argument Committee of the FCBA, and just finished her tenure as the chair of the Litigation Committee of the Asian American Bar Association of New York. Daniel Klein serves as Vice Chair of the Rules Committee and as a member of the Patent Appeals Subcommittee of the FCBA.

Updated Sep 2024