- Dewey & LeBoeuf
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Dewey & LeBoeuf LLP 
Headquarters New York City No. of offices 26 No. of attorneys 1100 practice_areas = General practice Key people Steven H. Davis, Chairman; Morton A. Pierce, Vice-Chairman; Ralph C. Ferrara, Vice-Chairman Date founded 1909 Company type Limited liability partnership Website www.deweyleboeuf.com Dewey & LeBoeuf LLP is a prominent global white shoe law firm, headquartered in New York City. Originally founded in 1909, the firm currently has over 2400 lawyers spread throughout 26 offices in 15 countries on 4 continents, and is known primarily for its corporate, insurance, litigation, tax and restructuring practices.
Contents
History
Dewey & LeBoeuf was created on October 1, 2007 through the combination of two venerable New York-based firms, Dewey Ballantine and LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene & MacRae.
Dewey Ballantine
Main article: Dewey BallantineIn 1909 began the law firm that would be known for years as the Root Clark firm, and thereafter as Dewey Ballantine. In that year, three recent graduates of Harvard Law School - Grenville Clark, Francis W. Bird, and Elihu Root, Jr., son of New York Senator Elihu Root (who had previously served as United States Secretary of War (1899–1904) and as United States Secretary of State (1904–1909)), agreed to establish a law partnership on Wall Street, named Root, Clark & Bird. The young lawyers were able to capitalize on the senior Root's connections to gain an entry into high financial circles and soon had a thriving law practice. In 1913, the firm merged with the firm of Buckner & Howland (a firm which had recently been founded by Emory Buckner) to form Root, Clark, Buckner & Howland.
In the 1920s, Arthur A. Ballantine, who had become the Internal Revenue Service's first solicitor in 1918, joined the firm and ran the firm along with Emory Buckner throughout the 1920s and 1930s. During the Great Depression, the firm flourished by moving away from its traditional focus on litigation and to begin focusing on bankruptcy and reorganizations, and then by taking the advantage of the New Deal to build a thriving regulatory practice. The firm also built up a corporate practice, serving clients such as AT&T and Standard Oil. Overall, the firm expanded from 8 to 74 associates and opened a second office in Washington, D.C. Both Henry Friendly and John Marshall Harlan II worked at the firm during this period.
Dewey Ballantine's principal office at the Calyon Building, New York City.
In 1946, six Root, Clark partners, including Henry Friendly, departed to found Cleary, Friendly, Gottlieb & Steen, the predecessor of Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton.
In 1955, three-time governor of New York and failed presidential candidate Thomas E. Dewey became a partner at the firm, which was renamed Dewey, Ballantine, Bushby, Palmer & Wood. Under Dewey and Ballantine's leadership, the firm attracted new clients, such as General Motors, Morgan Stanley, and Mobil Oil.
In early 2007, Dewey Ballantine had approximately 500 attorneys in 12 offices around the world. Following a failed merger attempt with Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe in early 2007, on October 1, 2007, Dewey Ballantine merged with LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene & MacRae.
LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene & MacRae
Main article: LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene & MacRaeFrom its beginnings in 1929, LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene & MacRae was known for its representation of energy and public utility companies, and from 1965, when it was selected as U.S. counsel for Lloyd's of London, it became a preeminent law firm advising insurance companies. It was this that led to the opening of the London office in 1978.
The firm was originally founded by Randall J. LeBoeuf, Jr., who was born in Albany, New York, in 1897. While still in solo practice in 1929, LeBoeuf became general counsel to Niagra Hudson Power Company and the Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA). As his workload increased, LeBoeuf recruited his friend Bill Winston from an Albany law firm to form the partnership LeBoeuf & Winston on October 7, 1929, just before the U.S. stock market collapsed. Within six months, the new partnership had established itself at 15 Broad Street, New York City, where it shared offices with Niagra Hudson Power.
Horace Lamb joined the partnership in 1934 to enhance its expertise in a wider variety of legal matters. Characterized as an aggressive litigator, Lamb came to the firm after working for the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice as well as in private practice. Lamb soon become a name partner at the firm.
In 1952 Adrian C. Leiby, a former clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harlan Fiske Stone, left his position at the firm of DeForest & Durr to join LeBoeuf, which was renamed LeBoeuf, Lamb & Leiby. Leiby brought with him 20 years of experience in corporate securities and finances.
Anticipating the creation of the Atomic Energy Commission to regulate the new civilian use of fission plants, LeBoeuf opened its first branch office in 1952 in Washington, D.C. to help utilities license nuclear plants.
One of the nation's top public utility lawyers, Cameron F. MacRae, Jr., joined the firm from Whitman Ransom, in 1958. The following year, Randall LeBoeuf became the special assistant attorney general representing New York in a water rights dispute over the amount of Great Lakes water that could be diverted through the Chicago Drainage Canal. This conflict pitted the lakes states against those next to the Mississippi River.
The firm lost three of its name partners in short succession in the 1970s: Randall LeBoeuf in 1975, Adrian Leiby in 1976, and Horace Lamb in 1977. Cameron MacRae, who had been formally installed as presiding partner in 1970, remained at the firm, which had become known as LeBoeuf, Lamb, Leiby & MacRae.
The firm developed an ambitious growth strategy in the 1970s through the 1990s. As a result, it expanded to became an international law firm with offices not only in the U.S. but also in London, Paris, Moscow, Riyadh, Beijing and Hong Kong. By early 2007, LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene & MacRae had approximately 650 attorneys in 19 offices around the world. On October 1, 2007, the firm merged with Dewey Ballantine.
Recognition and Awards
Recent recognition of the firm's practice groups and lawyers includes:
Chambers Global (2009 edition) ranked Dewey & LeBoeuf as a leader in 35 practice or sector categories and named 37 of its lawyers as leading practitioners;
Legal 500 US (2009 edition) ranked Dewey & LeBoeuf as a leading firm in 16 practice or sector categories, with 28 partners recognized as leaders in their area of practice; and
Chambers USA (2009 edition) ranked Dewey & LeBoeuf as a leading firm in 29 practice or sector categories, with 56 partners recognized as leaders in their area of practice.
Pro bono activities
Dewey & LeBoeuf has long maintained a strong commitment to pro bono service, and its attorneys devote tens of thousands of hours every year to public service projects around the world across a range of areas, including housing, civil rights, voting rights, education, criminal trials and appeals, entertainment and the arts, family law and domestic violence, immigration and asylum, not-for-profit and small business advice, and animal rights.
In September 2009, Dewey & LeBoeuf agreed to act on a pro bono basis for Caster Semenya, the South African track athlete, to protect her civil and human rights in connection with the controversial gender testing to which she was subjected. Previously, a team headed by Dewey partners Jeffrey Kessler, Marco Consonni and David Feher represented, on a pro bono basis, Oscar Pistorius, a South African double amputee runner who was seeking to qualify for the 400 m event at the 2008 Summer Olympics, but was banned by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) from participating.[1]
Diversity
Dewey & LeBoeuf has long valued diversity, seeing it as one of its core strengths. The firm has been presented by The Minority Corporate Counsel Association with the Thomas L. Sager Award in recognition of the firm's commitment to diversity in 2008 and 2009. The firm also received a perfect score on the Human Rights Campaign's 2008 and 2009 Corporate Equality Index.
Notable cases
In September 2009, Dewey & LeBoeuf advised on two major M&A transactions. The firm played a leading role on Walt Disney's $4 billion cash and stock acquisition of Marvel Entertainment, a deal that gives Disney the rights to more than 5,000 Marvel characters, including Iron Man and the Incredible Hulk. A team of Dewey & LeBoeuf lawyers also advised eBay in the company's agreement to sell a 65 percent stake of its Skype communications unit to a group of private investors, led by the Silicon Valley private equity firm Silver Lake Partners, in a deal valuing the business at $2.75 billion. The firm has also represented billionaire Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban against the Securities and Exchange Commission's accusations of insider trading.
Notable alumni
- Thomas E. Dewey, noted prosecutor, Governor of New York (1943–1954) and twice Republican candidate for the U.S. Presidency (1944 and 1948)
- Elihu Root, noted American lawyer and statesman, U.S. Secretary of State, United States Secretary of War, U.S. Senator from New York, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize
- Emory Buckner, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York and one of the architects of the modern Wall Street legal culture
- John Marshall Harlan II, U.S. Supreme Court Justice
- Henry Friendly, Chief Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom
- Joseph A. Califano, Jr., Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, general counsel of the United States Army and Chairman of the Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University
- Herbert Brownell, Jr., Attorney General of the United States under President Dwight D. Eisenhower
- Richard Owen, U.S. District Court Judge, Southern District of New York
- Charles Sifton, U.S. District Court Judge, Eastern District of New York
- George E. Cleary, Leo Gottlieb and Melvin C. Steen, founding partners of Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton
- Marshall Skadden, Leslie Arps and John Slate, founding partners of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom
- Francis T.P. Plimpton, founding partner of Debevoise & Plimpton
- Robert P. Patterson and Vanderbilt Webb, founding partners of Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler
- Lloyd K. Garrison, name partner of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison
- Frank Iacobucci, Puisne Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada
- Michael Steele, Chairman of the Republican National Committee (RNC)
- Sam Seaborn, Deputy White House Communications Director (fictional character in the television series The West Wing)
Offices
Americas
- New York City
- Washington, D.C.
- Chicago
- Los Angeles
- San Francisco
- Silicon Valley
- Houston
- Boston
- Albany, New York
Europe
Russia/CIS
Asia Pacific
Africa
Middle East
See also
- White shoe firms
- Magic Circle (law)
References
- ^ "Oscar Pistorius Receives His Day In Court". Dewey LeBoeuf Website. 2008-02-13. http://www.deweyleboeuf.com/News/detail.aspx?news=6511. Retrieved 2008-04-05.
External links
Categories:- Law firms based in New York City
- Law firms established in 2007
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