Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP, commonly known as Willkie, is a white-shoe, internationallaw firm headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1888, the firm specializes in corporate practice and employs approximately 1200 lawyers in 15 offices across six countries.
Two partners have served as American Bar Association President. The first was Charles A. Boston (who became an associate at the firm in 1901 when it was Hornblower, Byrne, Miller & Potter) in 1930–31. He was followed by Harold J. Gallagher (who initially joined the firm in 1917 when it was Hornblower, Miller & Garrison) in 1949–50.[6][7][8]
In 1931, the firm merged with the law firm of Miller, Otis and Farr. At that point, in total the firm had 12 partners and 24 associates, making it one of New York's larger firms.[4] In 1939, the firm hired its first female associate, Mary MacDonagh.[6]
In January 1940 Harold J. Gallagher, one of the most influential partners in the history of the firm,[6] extended an offer to Wendell Willkie to join the firm then known as Miller, Boston & Owen. This was several months before Willkie received the Republican nomination for president.[9] After losing the presidential election to the incumbent FDR, Willkie joined the firm and became a partner in 1941.[10] The firm's name was changed a year later to Willkie, Owen, Otis & Bailly, and later to Willkie, Owen, Otis, Farr & Gallagher.[11] Willkie later became F.D.R.'s personal envoy to many countries, promoting the Lend-Lease program. He later wrote a book about his travels entitled One World, a plea for global cooperation and peacekeeping.[12] In 1947, his estate's interest in the law firm was valued at $125,000 ($1,706,000 in current dollar terms).[13] That year, the customary hourly rate of a Willkie partner was $50 ($700 in current dollar terms) an hour.[14]
Throughout the 1960s, Gallagher-lead Willkie was occupied with railroad reorganizations, setting the stage for the firm's emergence as a bankruptcy powerhouse. In 1968 the firm adopted its current name, Willkie Farr & Gallagher.[4] From 1969 to 1995, Bob Hodes was the chairman of the firm.[16] In 1977, Patricia S. Skigen became the firm's first female partner.[6] That year, the firm moved to One Citicorp Center.[4]
In 1993 Willkie suffered a precipitous drop in business when Shearson Lehman, which accounted for one-third of Willkie Farr billings, was sold to The Travelers Companies.[17][18] The firm consequently adopted a policy that no client would account for more than five percent of its business.
In 1994, corporate partner Nora Ann Wallace became the first female member of the firm's executive committee.[6] Beginning in 1995, and for the next two decades, Mario Cuomo (the former 52ndGovernor of New York) was of counsel at Willkie Farr.[19]
In 2003, carbon monoxide and smoke inhalation from a fire at a historic bed-and-breakfast in Charlottesville, Virginia, where members of the firm were staying on a recruiting trip, killed Willkie recruiting coordinators Trish Langlade and Billie Kelly.[20][21][22]
In 2007, Willkie announced a strategic alliance with Dickson Minto, a boutique law firm with offices in London and Edinburgh that specializes in private equity, with both continuing to operate independently of each other.[23] Willkie was recognized in 2015 as being in 'Band 1' (the top ranking) on the national scale for its work in eight practice areas according to Chambers & Partners.[24]
In 2019, Gordon Caplan, then co-chairman of the firm,[25] named 2018 “Dealmaker of the Year” by The American Lawyer,[26] was indicted as a parent participant in the 2019 college admissions bribery scandal, for conspiracy to commit mail fraud and wire fraud; the firm placed him on indefinite leave the next day.[27][28][29][30][31] A felony guilty plea deal was filed in March 2019, and he was sentenced to one month in prison.[32][33]
The American Lawyer ranked Willkie Farr 47th in gross revenue, with $772 million in 2017, and in the 2018 Global 200 survey it was ranked the 57th-highest-grossing law firm in the world.[34] It had 145 equity partners, and its profits per equity partner were $2.97 million, 17th-highest in the nation.[35][36] In size, it was ranked the 68th-largest law firm in the United States.[34]
In November 2023, amid a wave of antisemitic incidents at elite U.S. law schools, Willkie Farr & Gallagher was among a group of major law firms who sent a letter to top law school deans warning them that an escalation in incidents targeting Jewish students would have corporate hiring consequences. The letter said "We look to you to ensure your students who hope to join our firms after graduation are prepared to be an active part of workplace communities that have zero tolerance policies for any form of discrimination or harassment, much less the kind that has been taking place on some law school campuses."[37]
Roberta Karmel – first female SEC Commissioner, Centennial Professor of Law & Co-Director, Center for the Study of International Business Law, Brooklyn Law School[41]
The firm has 1,200 lawyers, in 15 offices in six countries (including offices in New York, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Palo Alto, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Paris (created in 1921), London, Rome, Milan, Munich, Frankfurt, and Brussels).[4]
Mario Matthew Cuomo was an American lawyer and politician who served as the 52nd governor of New York for three terms, from 1983 to 1995. A member of the Democratic Party, Cuomo previously served as the lieutenant governor of New York from 1979 to 1982 and the secretary of State of New York from 1975 to 1978. He was the father of former New York governor Andrew Cuomo and NewsNation anchor Christopher Cuomo.
Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP and Affiliates, typically shortened to Skadden, is an American multinational law firm headquartered in New York City. The company is known for its work on company mergers and takeovers.
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Lindley Miller Garrison was an American lawyer from New Jersey who served as Secretary of War under U.S. President Woodrow Wilson between 1913 and 1916.
Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP, doing business as Arnold & Porter, is an American multinational law firm. It is a white-shoe firm and among the largest law firms in the world, both by revenue and by number of lawyers.
Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP, commonly known as Davis Polk, is a white-shoe, international law firm headquartered in New York City with offices in Washington, D.C., Palo Alto, London, Madrid, Brussels, Hong Kong, Beijing, Tokyo, and São Paulo. The firm maintains an all-equity partnership, with profits per partner of over $7 million. It is the third most profitable law firm in the world.
Kirkland & Ellis LLP is an American multinational law firm headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. Founded in 1909, Kirkland & Ellis is the largest law firm in the world by revenue and the seventh-largest by number of attorneys, and was the first law firm in the world to reach US$4 billion in annual revenue.
Foley & Lardner LLP is an international law firm founded in 1842. In terms of revenue, it ranked 48th on The American Lawyer's 2022 AmLaw 100 rankings of U.S. law firms, with over $1 billion in gross revenue in 2021.
Sidley Austin LLP is an American multinational law firm with approximately 2,300 lawyers in 21 offices worldwide. It was established in 1866 and its headquarters is at One South Dearborn in Chicago's Loop. Among its alumni are former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama.
Ropes & Gray LLP is a global law firm with 13 offices located in the United States, Asia and Europe. The firm has more than 1,500 lawyers and professionals worldwide; its clients include corporations and financial institutions, government agencies, universities, and health care organizations. It was founded in 1865 in Boston by John Codman Ropes and John Chipman Gray.
Baker Botts L.L.P. is an American law firm with approximately 725 lawyers. Headquartered in One Shell Plaza in Downtown Houston, Texas, the firm has energy and technology related clients. It is the second-oldest law firm west of the Mississippi.
The Constitution Project is a non-profit think tank in the United States whose goal is to build bipartisan consensus on significant constitutional and legal questions. Its founder and president is Virginia Sloan. The Constitution Project’s work is divided between two programs: the Rule of Law Program and the Criminal Justice Program. Each program houses bipartisan committees focused on specific constitutional issues.
Edmund Walter Sim is an international trade attorney and regular editorial contributor to the Singapore Straits Times and OpinionAsia on trade and diplomacy in ASEAN., as well as editing the ASEAN Economic Community blog A partner at Appleton Luff, he has participated in over 180 trade remedy proceedings in both traditional jurisdictions such as the U.S., EU, Canada and Australia, as well as non-traditional jurisdictions such as Korea, China, Turkey, Indonesia, South Africa, India, Russia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore. Sim has provided assistance to government trade ministries in Asia. Sim has participated in dispute resolution proceedings under the World Trade Organization, General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the North American Free Trade Agreement and the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement. Sim represented companies in dealing with the economic integration of the ASEAN economies through the ASEAN Free Trade Agreement and other programs and teaches a course on this subject at the National University of Singapore law school.
William Butler Hornblower was a New York jurist who served on the New York Court of Appeals. He was unsuccessfully nominated to the United States Supreme Court by President Grover Cleveland in 1893.
Andrew W. Needham is a prominent American tax lawyer. He is a partner at Cravath, Swaine & Moore. He joined the law firm as a lateral partner in 2005 from Willkie Farr & Gallagher. Needham was among the Cravath partners who advised Johnson & Johnson in its 2011 purchase of Synthes, Inc. for $21.3 billion, then the largest acquisition by Johnson & Johnson in its history.
Louis Aloysius Craco Jr. was an American lawyer. He was the president of the New York City Bar Association and a life member of the American Law Institute. He was a partner with the law firm Willkie, Farr & Gallagher and, later, Craco & Ellsworth. He was a co-founder of the Volunteers of Legal Service (VOLS) of New York City - organization providing pro bono legal services to low income New Yorkers. In 2004 he was awarded a Gold medal from the New York State Bar Association for his numerous contributions to development of the profession.
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↑ Sorkin, Andrew Ross; Mattu, Ravi; Warner, Bernhard; Kessler, Sarah; Merced, Michael J. de la; Hirsch, Lauren; Livni, Ephrat (2 November 2023). "Law Firms Warn Universities About Antisemitism on Campus". The New York Times. Retrieved 2 November 2023.
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$1.38 billion (2022) [1] 
