Welcome to the first Boardroom Guide to Legal Counsel—ever. What separates this guide from all others is that it is entirely board-centric. A great law firm is not hard to find. Yet a great board counselor is not only a great find, but also a trusted advocate in the most meaningful sense of the word. There is a different dynamic when the company or management receives legal guidance.
The Guide is intended to help directors and C-suite executives make informed decisions when looking for or engaging counsel. We have included the largest firms that counsel boards and those that specialize in the areas that are most relevant to directors. The Guide includes demographic information, revenues, largest clients, and synopses of recent high-profile cases for each firm.
Note that this is not a ranking. We don’t believe that law firms can be ranked as in various and ambiguous top 20 lists. Such lists are predictable and leave you no closer to choosing your board counsel than if you simply asked your neighbor. One Fortune 50 general counsel who sits on our legal advisory board explained to us that major companies may often have as many as 200 or more law firms on retainer or doing business with them, so all of them may be potentially conflicted from serving as board counsel. Further, relationships are often built with a specific partner, not the whole firm. Instead, we wanted to shed more light on what makes each firm unique, the services that they provide, and the attorneys and partners that work to earn your trust.
Roster of Law Firms – to view a firm’s profile and the individual law partners, click on the firm name
Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld
Bingham McCutchen
Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton
Cravath, Swaine & Moore
Davis Polk & Wardwell
Debevoise & Plimpton
DLA Piper
Foley & Lardner
Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson
Fulbright & Jaworski
Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher
Jones Day
Katten Muchin Rosenman
King & Spalding
Kirkland & Ellis
Latham & Watkins
McDermott Will & Emery
Morgan, Lewis & Bockius
O’Melveny & Myers
Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe
Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker
Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison
Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman
Reed Smith
Ropes & Gray
Seyfarth Shaw
Shearman & Sterling
Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom
Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal
Sullivan & Cromwell
Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz
Weil, Gotshal & Manges
Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr
Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati
Winston & Strawn
While the list that you compiled is full of distinguished, brilliant, and venerable law firms, I believe that it is woefully incomplete without the “Magic Circle.” These are the six most influential British law firms. They are truly global in scope and outlook. Allen & Overy, for example, employs more than half of its attorneys outside its HQ jurisdiction, the U.K. They should be considered by any company with international ambitions. These firms are: Allen & Overy, Clifford Chance, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Linklaters, and Slaughter and May.
An interesting suggestion which we will follow up on for our next review of outstanding board counsel – editors of Directorship