Firm overview
Willkie’s litigators have won several precedent-setting victories across a wide spectrum of legal issues in courts around the nation. Our litigators are known for their creativity and practical approach in handling complex matters, tactical acumen, team focus, and for their deep appreciation of clients’ business needs. We are highly collaborative and creative litigators who litigate with a single purpose in mind: to win.
Willkie hosts a sophisticated and diverse national and international litigation practice representing major financial services companies, accounting firms, insurance and reinsurance companies and brokers, media companies, and individuals such as corporate officers and directors and accountants in complex commercial and class-action litigation involving all substantive areas.
We understand that our clients expect excellence with efficiency and one of the hallmarks of our litigation department is to staff our cases—even the largest, highest-stakes matters—with lean, nimble, and diverse teams so that everyone has the opportunity to add value. Our firm’s commitment to making the department diverse across both the associate and partner ranks is real. Whether by nurturing diverse talent from within the firm, or through lateral hiring, our litigation department is committed to creating diverse teams of lawyers to work on our most important matters. We also pride ourselves on giving associates meaningful roles in significant matters.
Commercial: With more than 200 skilled litigation lawyers firm-wide, we have the depth, breadth, and experience to handle the most complex and challenging commercial disputes. Our lawyers combine skillful advocacy, top-tier legal analysis, and deep business experience to achieve our clients’ litigation and business goals. We pride ourselves on working closely with our clients to become trusted advisors with a keen focus on their long-term needs. We bring unrivaled efficiency and experience to every dispute and deliver results that exceed our clients’ expectations. We regularly represent clients in bringing and defending actions involving alleged breaches of contract and other business torts that frequently intersect with antitrust, securities, intellectual property, ERISA, employment, and other laws.
Securities: Willkie’s securities litigators regularly handle some of the largest and highest-profile securities class actions in the United States. We represent issuers, underwriters, and auditors in significant securities class actions and have obtained important victories for clients in securities fraud cases, cases arising out of poorly performing public offerings, internal or government investigations, and the restructuring of distressed companies. We have been at the vanguard of the recent wave of “busted IPO” cases, retained by investment banks like Goldman Sachs & Co., Morgan Stanley & Co., and J.P. Morgan Chase, to grapple with the fallout from the Supreme Court’s high-profile Cyan v. Beaver County decision in 2018. Willkie has advanced leading-edge arguments in this quickly evolving area of the law in several high-profile matters.
White-Collar: Willkie’s White-Collar Defense and Compliance, Investigations & Enforcement practice groups regularly handle high-profile investigations and enforcement actions and complex white-collar cases across multiple jurisdictions. We represent public companies, financial institutions and their executives in a broad range of criminal and regulatory matters, with particular strengths in the securities industry, parallel SEC/DOJ investigations, and hedge funds. Our team includes former federal prosecutors, a former Assistant Director in the SEC’s Division of Enforcement and counsel to the SEC Chairman, a former DOJ Acting Fraud Chief, and a former Associate Director of the SEC’s New York Regional Office, among others.
Intellectual Property: Willkie is best known as a leader in sophisticated intellectual property litigation, and for its ability to represent and counsel clients across the intersections of intellectual property with other practice areas and across technologies. Willkie’s IP litigators pride themselves on results, working collaboratively with their clients and each other to achieve pragmatic and successful outcomes, representing U.S. and non-U.S. clients in litigation, transactions, and counseling, and licensing of patents, trademarks, copyrights, domain names and trade secrets. Our patent trial attorneys represent technology leaders in jury and non-jury cases in federal courts across the United States and regularly appear in other patent forums, including the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office Patent Trial and Appeal Board. We have experience handling cases in most industries and technologies, including pharmaceuticals, biologics, computer hardware and software, semiconductors, medical devices, consumer products, information and financial services, electronic devices, e-commerce, energy, sports, insurance, and music rights. Willkie’s IP team has been working on matters related to the Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act (BPCIA) for many years and has deep experience in the field of biologics and biosimilars, including BPCIA litigation, patent landscape analyses, and inter partes review proceedings. Just as importantly, we are routinely retained to handle complex copyright, trademark, and trade secret issues, representing clients in cases involving trademark infringement and dilution, cyber-squatting and false advertising. We handle oppositions and cancellations before the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board; represent clients in copyright infringement litigation in federal courts; counsel clients on strategies to protect and defend their trade secrets; and represent clients in trade secret litigation under state law and the Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2016.
Appellate: When trial court results are challenged, we have extensive appellate experience as well. Our team has briefed and argued appeals in state and federal courts around the United States, including matters before the Supreme Court. Our team is well versed in the intricacies of the appellate process, and understands how to navigate an appeal through the courts. As we do during the trial court phase, we are always thinking ahead to potential appeal issues, providing agile counsel to adeptly tackle substantial legal issues.
Bankruptcy: Willkie’s bankruptcy litigators have acted for distressed companies, their boards, board members and special committees of commercial lenders; major creditors and creditor groups; official committees; investors in distressed debt; private funds; administrative agents and lender groups; acquirers of distressed assets; equity holders; and other parties with interests in distressed situations. We are highly experienced with the expedited and transactional nature of bankruptcy litigation and appear regularly in bankruptcy court, trying high-pressure adversary proceedings, contested matters, and appeals throughout the United States, as well as insolvency proceedings in the UK, France, Germany and other key European jurisdictions. Our broad bankruptcy litigation experience includes: contested hearings, including dip, disclosure statement, confirmation and adequate protection hearings; stay relief and adequate protection litigation; lender liability; officer and director liability; and fraudulent transfer litigation.
Insurance: Willkie’s insurance team provides comprehensive counsel on a full range of insurance and reinsurance coverage disputes. Unique among law firms, we represent clients in all three segments of insurance coverage disputes—policyholders, insurance brokers and insurance companies. We are proud that clients in all three corners of the coverage triangle call on us to solve their most difficult problems. Our knowledge of all three segments gives us a deep understanding of the thinking and motivations of all of the participants in a coverage dispute. This, in turn, provides our clients with insight not normally available from other law firms that typically represent one side only. Clients value our unique perspective and the creativity we bring to resolving disputes, whether through negotiation, litigation or arbitration. And, because the parties to insurance coverage disputes know we are not aligned with only one category of clients, they are more willing to work with us to reach prompt and fair resolutions.
Antitrust & Competition: Willkie is known for providing practical advice to clients facing challenging, cross-border antitrust problems (‘One-World Antitrust’). Our practice spans a wide spectrum of industries, with particular experience advising clients in financial services, Internet and technology, pharmaceuticals and healthcare, insurance, chemicals, payments, manufacturing of heavy equipment and building products, consumer products, accounting, energy, space, retail, and transportation. We have a strong reputation for handling high-profile antitrust litigations, mergers, and regulatory investigations.
Employment: Our lawyers regularly represent companies and senior managers on employment law issues. We frequently appear on behalf of our clients in federal and state courts and administrative agencies with respect to gender, age, and disability discrimination claims, wage and hour issues, and unfair competition and theft of trade secrets claims. We also regularly represent employers and ERISA fiduciaries in federal courts around the country in both individual and class action lawsuits. We have been involved in precedent-setting cases that have created law across an array of areas, including ERISA plan fee litigation, reimbursement rights, recovery of pension overpayments, ERISA estoppel and ESOP valuations, among many others. Our experience encompasses virtually all areas of disputes involving employee benefit plans.
Updated Sep 2021
