Kirkland & Ellis LLP is a global law firm with more than 3,500 attorneys representing clients in private equity, M&A and other complex corporate transactions, litigation and dispute resolution/arbitration, restructuring, and intellectual property matters. The Firm has offices in 20 cities around the world: Austin, Bay Area, Beijing, Boston, Brussels, Chicago, Dallas, Hong Kong, Houston, London, Los Angeles, Miami, Munich, New York, Paris, Riyadh, Salt Lake City, Shanghai and Washington, D.C.
Litigation:
Kirkland & Ellis is renowned for its experience in complex litigation and arbitration. The Firm believes that the best litigation results occur when the lawyers are fully prepared to try the case through verdict. Because of Kirkland’s trial-ready philosophy and training, the Firm is able to offer clients a deep bench of lawyers who have been taking cases to verdict since the early stages of their careers. Whether in the courtroom, at the bargaining table or helping clients avoid risks without litigation, Kirkland has a long and proven track record of generating successful results for clients in their most high-stakes cases matters.
The Litigation Practice Group comprises approximately 625 attorneys throughout the firm’s worldwide offices. Kirkland represents clients in trial and appellate courts at the federal and state level, before administrative tribunals, and in arbitrations and other dispute resolution proceedings. The Firm also represents clients in connection with proceedings involving government agencies, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission, US Attorneys General Offices, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, the New York Stock Exchange, the US Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission, the US Patent and Trademark Office, the US Department of Labor and the Internal Revenue Service.
Kirkland litigators have successfully litigated cases in virtually every substantive area and business segment including accountant liability, antitrust and competition, appellate, class action, mass tort and toxic tort, insurance, data privacy, labor and employment, breach of contract and securities litigation.
Kirkland has been recognized by clients and the media for its achievements in litigation:
Intellectual Property Litigation:
Kirkland & Ellis’ Intellectual Property Practice Group is one of the oldest such practices in a full-service firm in the country, having been an integral part of Kirkland since 1925. Kirkland has approximately 200 intellectual property lawyers who are experienced in a variety of technical disciplines and registered to practice before the US Patent and Trademark Office. More than 70 percent of the lawyers are engineers and scientists trained with degrees and professional backgrounds in technical areas. Kirkland has one of the most respected intellectual property litigation practices in the country, with particular experience in large-scale patent, copyright, trademark, trade secret misappropriation and advertising matters. The work of the group frequently extends to antitrust, securities/compliance, products liability and appellate matters. Kirkland’s experience in venues where IP cases are most often litigated is extensive. The Firm tries cases before juries, judges and arbitrators in venues across the country including state courts, district courts, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, the International Trade Commission and the Patent Trial and Appeal Board. Kirkland has one of the most active trial practices in the country. Our success rate at trial is among the best, with only a few of losses over the last 10 years despite handling some of the most challenging litigation cases in history.
The Intellectual Property Practice Group has been recognized by numerous publications for its achievements:
• In Managing Intellectual Property’s 2024 IP Stars, Kirkland was named as a Tier 1 firm for Copyright, ITC, Life Sciences, Patent Contentious and Trademark Contentious and was recognized in the U.S. for IP transactions and PTAB litigation.
• Kirkland was named to World Trademark Review magazine’s 2024 WTR 1000
list of the world’s top trademark law firms and was recognized as a Tier 1 firm for enforcement and litigation nationally and in New York.
• In 2024, Intellectual Asset Management (IAM) magazine recognized Kirkland in Tier 1 for Litigation, International Trade Commission and Trade Secrets for United States -National in its IAM Patent 1000 guide. The firm was also Tier 1 for Litigation in Illinois, New York and Washington, D.C., as well as Transactions in Illinois.
• World Intellectual Property Review (WIPR) recognized Kirkland & Ellis as a Tier 1 firm in its 2022 “Global Trade Secrets Rankings.”
Please visit our website at www.kirkland.com for additional information about Kirkland and office contact information.
Updated July 2024
King & Spalding helps leading companies advance complex business interests in more than 160 countries. Working across a highly integrated platform of more than 1,300 lawyers in 24 offices globally, we deliver tailored commercial solutions through world-class offerings and an uncompromising approach to quality and service.
Trial and Global Disputes: Our experienced disputes lawyers try and arbitrate high-stakes cases every year across the globe in the most challenging jurisdictions for corporate clients. Recognized for creativity, meticulous preparation, and top-rate advocacy, our lawyers help clients navigate the litigation lifecycle, working together from day one to identify business objectives, develop a strategy to meet those objectives, and then execute that strategy. With more than 450 lawyers in 17 offices worldwide, we are uniquely able to staff and manage large and cross-border disputes from filing, to trial, and through appeal. Our lawyers have a variety of expertise across substantive areas, including Appellate Law, Class Action Defense, Commercial Litigation, Construction & Engineering Disputes, Corporate & Securities Litigation, E-Discovery, Insolvency Litigation, Insurance Coverage & Recovery, Intellectual Property, International Arbitration, Labor & Employment, Product Liability, Professional Liability, and Toxic & Environmental Torts. Working together—one area of expertise informing another—our disputes lawyers provide clients with seamless and efficient representation in the most complex and sensitive matters.
Capabilities:
Government Matters: Clients ranging from Fortune Global 50 corporations to high-profile individuals in every region of the world entrust King & Spalding’s Government Matters practice to guide them through rapidly changing regulatory landscapes, complex investigations by U.S. and foreign enforcement authorities, highly sensitive internal investigations and related, often parallel civil proceedings.
Hundreds of lawyers across the United States, Europe and Asia bring decades of prior government service and industry experience to our regulatory and investigative practices, which serve the financial services, pharmaceutical and medical device, healthcare, energy, automotive and technology sectors in particular. The team includes six U.S. Attorneys, 24 Assistant U.S. Attorneys, and former senior officials from the highest ranks in regulatory and enforcement organizations that are most significant to our clients.
Our experienced team includes former leaders at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Food and Drug Administration, the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the Internal Revenue Service, the Department of Commerce, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, the Bank of England, the U.K’s Financial Reporting Council and the World Trade Organization.
Capabilities:
Corporate, Finance and Investments: Our Corporate, Finance and Investments team brings a collaborative approach to help clients execute complex, high-value transactions. We have a fully integrated platform with more than 330 lawyers in 17 offices, offering clients the benefit of global specialists with local knowledge and industry expertise. We work side by side with our clients to execute transactions efficiently and effectively—we understand what matters to both our clients and opposite parties and we explain the actual, practical risks to our clients.
Capabilities:
Updated Sep 2024
Husch Blackwell’s litigators are active coast to coast, asserting and defending client interests in virtually all types of litigation. We feature more than 400 litigators across more than 20 offices across the United States and are capable of taking on the most complex matters, ranging from bet-the-company cases to large portfolios of litigation spread across multiple jurisdictions. Clients around the world trust us to understand their businesses, their objectives, and their unique ways of working and to develop solutions that are practical, efficient and comprehensive in scope.
The efficiency and effectiveness of our case management capabilities are well attested. Both in 2017, 2018, and 2022, our firm’s Litigation Department was honored by the Association of Corporate Counsel with its prestigious Value Champion award, an accolade that recognizes collaborations that delivered substantial value to client organizations by cutting spending, improving predictability and achieving better legal results. Again in 2020, Husch Blackwell was recognized for its litigation teams’ innovation and design excellence in legal operations by the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC), which chose the firm as a showcase firm for the 2020 Legal Innovation in Operations (LIO) Project designees. Husch Blackwell received the recognition on the basis of its management of a large portfolio of asbestos-related litigation for a client. In the ten months our team handled the portfolio, we posted results that vastly outperformed the client’s prior efforts, including over a 30 percent reduction in legal costs.
Area of practice:
Other offices:
Updated Sep 2024
Bartlit Beck has achieved an unparalleled record of success in complex litigation.
The firm is renowned for delivering extraordinary results to clients in difficult situations. Our successes include trial wins, victories on motions and appeals, and creative settlements across the gamut of commercial litigation, including intellectual property, breach of contract, product liability, antitrust, and shareholder disputes.
As a result of the firm’s success at trial, Bartlit Beck was named 2020 Trial Firm of the Year by Benchmark and was identified as one of the top nine firms in the United States for “striking the utmost fear into the hearts of seasoned General Counsel and legal decision makers” in a survey conducted by consulting firm BTI of 350 in-house leaders.
The average Bartlit Beck lawyer has more than 18 years of experience and has participated in multiple high-stakes trials. This is a product of our unique structure in which more than three-quarters of our lawyers are experienced partners and fewer than a quarter are associates. Thus, each case team is comprised mainly of experienced partners.
Our trial experience informs our overall approach: we focus on the key facts and issues that will drive the outcome, we make complex things simple, we win by showing the evidence rather than telling why we should win, we use demonstratives to boil down the key concepts to a few memorable images, and we establish ourselves as the reliable source of information.
Our lawyers intensely focus on a small number of cases at a time, allowing each team member to have command of the entire case. We believe our approach ensures better quality and results for our clients because each team member has a thorough understanding of the client’s goals and the path to success.
Our success is also due to the way we align our clients’ interests with our own. Our fixed and success-based fee structure is designed to eliminate the usual and often conflicting incentives present in the traditional hourly billing model.
We have extensive experience partnering with other law firms and service providers as part of a “virtual law firm.” Our highly collaborative approach means that we view in-house counsel and co-counsel as invaluable members of the team.
The information contained herein is for informational purposes only and is not legal advice or a substitute for legal counsel. Please contact any of our lawyers using the contact information found at bartlitbeck.com
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