Our Firm
Our Growth and Practice • Our Approach to the Markets • Our Technological Advantage • Our Ethic of Intergenerational Excellence • Our Commitment to Diversity • Our Engagement in Pro Bono and Public Service • Our Governance
Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Preston Gates Ellis LLP ("K&L Gates") comprises over 1,500 lawyers who practice in offices located in Anchorage, Austin, Beijing, Berlin, Boston, Dallas, Fort Worth, Harrisburg, Hong Kong, London, Los Angeles, Miami, Newark, New York, Orange County, Palo Alto, Paris, Pittsburgh, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle, Shanghai, Spokane/Coeur d'Alene, Taipei and Washington. K&L Gates represents capital markets participants and leading global corporations, growth and middle-market companies, and entrepreneurs in every major industry group as well as public sector entities, educational institutions and philanthropic organizations. Our practice is robustly a full market practice — at once regional, national and international in scope — and it is cutting edge, complex, and dynamic.
Our Growth and Practice
The U.S. roots of K&L Gates' institutional history are diverse: Kirkpatrick & Lockhart in Pittsburgh; Preston Gates & Ellis in Seattle; Hill Christopher & Phillips in Washington D.C.; Warner & Stackpole in Boston; Freshman Marantz Orlanski Cooper & Klein in Los Angeles; Wolin Ridley & Miller and Hughes & Luce in Dallas; and numerous additions of offices as well as lateral partners and groups in various other U.S. locations. In the United Kingdom, Nicholson Graham & Jones was founded in London over a century ago and joined the K&L Gates family in January 2005. With PGE came offices in Asia; in January 2007 we added Berlin; in January 2008 we added Paris; and in April 2008 we added Shanghai. Our 1,500 lawyers are now located in 25 offices on three continents.
K&L Gates practices law on an integrated and global basis. Indeed, in 2007, over 400 of our 500 largest clients used lawyers in two or more of our offices, and 10 of our 17 largest clients used lawyers in 10 or more of our offices. Our delivery of legal services is supported at both the individual office level and through five firmwide practice areas: Corporate and Transactional; Litigation and Dispute Resolution; Financial Services; Regulatory and Policy; and Intellectual Property. Within each of these practice areas is a number of subject matter and industry-based practice groups.
Our multi-office corporate and transactional practice is one of the most substantial in the profession. We have completed hundreds of M&A transactions and public and private debt and equity offerings over the last few years. We maintain a balance between company side and capital markets clients, in virtually every industry segment. We perform corporate engagements for very large multinational operating companies, ambitious middle market and emerging growth companies, and capital markets participants including public and private investment organizations, investment banks, commercial lenders and other financial institutions. Our lawyers in the United States, Europe and Asia are highly experienced in cross-border M&A, securities and financing transactions.
We are routinely ranked among leading law firms in the area of fund client representations in the mutual fund industry. We are also recognized as a leader in the consumer mortgage finance industry, private equity, hedge funds and venture capital, and ESOPs. The Firm recently represented the ESOP Trustee in the Tribune Company’s going-private transaction, the largest leveraged ESOP transaction in history. Private Equity Analyst recently ranked K&L Gates as one of the “most active law firms” for both private equity/venture capital transactions and fund formation. We have a sophisticated and growing global finance practice in areas including structured finance, securitizations, derivatives, high-yield debt, real estate finance, municipal finance, mezzanine lending and acquisition finance. In support of our global platform and emerging growth company practice, we have a substantial alternative capital markets practice, including AIM listings, PIPEs, reverse takeovers and SPACs.
Our litigation engagements ― including, among other substantive areas, insurance coverage, intellectual property, real estate, white-collar criminal, construction, professional liability, environmental, toxic tort, products liability, franchise, tax, bankruptcy and insolvency, antitrust and competition, employment, benefits, government contracts, constitutional and election law, and securities – are among the largest and most attractive enjoyed by any law firm. Our litigation practice includes international arbitrations, civil and criminal trials, class actions and appellate work. We have been rated a leading practice in the representation of corporate policyholders in the insurance coverage area and as a leading litigation firm for the financial services sector, and our litigation engagements have helped to shape intellectual property law in the fast-moving technology sector. Our acclaimed e-Discovery Analysis and Technology (“e-DAT”) group continues to pave the way nationally and internationally in the exploding field of e-discovery.
The firm’s regulatory and policy practice cuts across the many disciplines that require highly specialized knowledge and experience to address governmental regulation of the private markets. Our premier regulatory practice is in the diversified financial services area. We represent a large majority of the major financial institutions and securities firms in a variety of disciplines, and our investment management and mortgage banking practices are perennial leaders. Our position in the financial services sector has recently been acknowledged by the appointment of Washington, D.C. partner, Mike Missal, as Examiner in the high-profile New Century Financial bankruptcy proceeding. The regulatory practice covers a wide variety of areas including antitrust, energy, telecommunications, environmental, securities enforcement, food and drug, municipal finance, education, healthcare, government contracts, white collar and international trade. Many of our practice leaders as well as more junior lawyers have governmental experience that enhances their ability to serve K&L Gates clients in regulatory fields, while others have held prominent positions in regulated industries. At the same time, our public policy practice was ranked recently as among the largest and most influential in Washington and affords our clients the opportunity to shape regulatory and legislative initiatives affecting their businesses.
The firm continuously evaluates the direction of its practices and allocates resources so that its capabilities reach to the forefront of emerging disciplines. In recent years the firm has recruited laterally in such disparate fields as derivatives and structured finance, international trade, investment management and hedge funds, corporate transactional, licensing, private equity, tax, intellectual property, environmental, construction, securities enforcement, antitrust, toxic tort litigation, benefits and share schemes, real estate finance, bankruptcy, telecommunications, food and drug, FERC, public policy, and employment to address the evolving needs of our clientele. We also strive to maintain a creative, interdisciplinary approach to the practice, as evidenced by the extraordinary convergence of disciplines that permitted our K&L Gates colleague, former U.S. Attorney General Dick Thornburgh, to act as the court-appointed Examiner in the WorldCom bankruptcy proceeding — the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history — and the firm itself to act as his counsel.
Our lawyers practice at the peak of our profession. They serve as leaders of various professional organizations and render public service through pro bono representations and service to their communities. Our Boston partner, Mike Greco, served as President of the American Bar Association in 2005-06, while our Seattle partner, Bill Neukom, is serving as the 2007-08 President of the American Bar Association. K&L Gates lawyers participate vigorously in the intellectual debate that is so fundamental to the advanced practice of law, routinely address professional colloquia, and author leading treatises and articles in their fields.
Our Approach to the Markets
We believe that a deep appreciation for our clients’ concerns, challenges and business objectives is the foundation for successful business development. To that end, we have created a substantive and sophisticated brand and positioning platform that aligns our interests with those of our clients. This brand communicates our unified commitment to providing the highest level of client service and quality legal counsel in all our offices, and is strengthened by continuous and active measures to support, enhance and bolster the valued relationships K&L Gates maintains with clients. The BTI Consulting Group reinforced the firm’s commitment to clients by naming K&L Gates one of the top 30 law firms in client service as compared with more than 500 other leading firms. BTI’s Survey of Client Service Performance for Law Firms reported the results of more than 250 independent, individual interviews with corporate counsel at Fortune 1000 companies and other large organizations.
We support our lawyers with an array of services aimed at increasing the value we provide our clients. Our firmwide marketing and business development team, led by our Chief Marketing Officer, works with our practices and offices to develop and implement integrated programs and targeted activities, such as client feedback programs and internal client service teams that help ensure the retention of existing clients and enable the steady growth of new business. The firm has employed innovative measures in the past such as periodic market research surveys of senior in-house counsel, and we constantly look for ways to provide useful and valuable resources to clients and prospective clients. The ALM newsletter, Marketing The Law Firm, has formally recognized our firm’s distinct marketing efforts, and for the past three consecutive years the publication has included K&L Gates in the Top 20 of its MLF 50, an annual ranking for law firms.
Our marketing team collaborates with our recruitment professionals to enhance our outreach to law students and lateral associate and partner candidates, with our Pro Bono Committee to facilitate continued growth of the firm’s efforts in that area, and with our Director of Diversity to assure outreach to a diverse professional population. We also recognize that, as is the case with substantive legal skills, lawyers benefit from education and training in client development, and we offer opportunities for our lawyers to develop and enhance their skills in this vital area. One notable result is the outstanding Client Development and Relationship Management curriculum for our partners and associates across the firm.
Our Technological Advantage
K&L Gates has received CIO Magazine’s prestigious “CIO 100 Award” four times. This annual list of 100 enterprises is composed largely of great global corporations that are recognized for extraordinary achievements in the field of technology. K&L Gates was the first law firm in the world to receive three consecutive CIO 100 Awards. In 2007, K&L Gates received the CIO 100 Plus One Award, recognizing the firm’s outstanding business innovation achievements.
In 2005 and 2006, K&L Gates was recognized by the Legal IT Awards and Legal Technology Awards, two of the United Kingdom’s leading legal technology award programs, for achievement in process improvement and contributions to law firm success. Additionally, in 2004, K&L Gates was awarded “Most Innovative Use of Technology” by American Lawyer Media’s Law Technology News for the development of an electronic performance evaluation system that enables the firm to improve lawyer review processes and expand lawyer contributions to their review.
With the guidance of its Chief Information Officer and professional support staff, K&L Gates invests in the use of technology to maintain a competitive advantage in the marketplace for legal services and to support the practice and business of law. All K&L Gates offices are seamlessly linked together and utilize state-of-the-art technology which provides lawyers with a wide range of computer-based communications, practice support, and productivity tools — accessible not only from the office, but also while traveling and when working from home. Web-based technologies are used for both client and internal collaboration, including client extranets that add value to the legal services provided by the firm. K&L Gates continually evaluates emerging products and technology trends to improve and support our lawyers' practices and the firm's operations.
K&L Gates believes that effective technology utilization can add significant value and is committed to using it to enhance client service and the law firm’s business.
Our Ethic of Intergenerational Excellence
K&L Gates is strongly committed to our lawyers’ professional development. K&L Gates firmwide Professional Development Department leads our efforts in this area. Partners throughout the firm, together with our professional development professionals, work to create an extensive range of both formal and informal professional development opportunities for lawyers in all of our offices.
The K&L Gates Legal Practice Institute offers firmwide curricula in our key practice areas: Corporate and Transactional, Litigation and Dispute Resolution, Intellectual Property, Financial Services, and Policy and Regulatory. Our partners, together with senior associates, compose our faculty and transmit firm values and culture as well as legal knowledge in our programs. Through our live local programs and firmwide videoconferences, we showcase the talent, diversity, and expertise of our lawyers across the globe.
We recognize that technical ability alone is not enough to equip our lawyers to thrive in today’s competitive legal marketplace. Thus, in addition to substantive law and practice group-specific programming, the Institute also offers a curriculum in each of the following areas: Client Development and Relationship Management; Practice Management; Writing and Research; Lawyering Skills; and Professionalism and Ethics. Programs in these areas are taught primarily through hands-on or interactive workshops led by our partners, as well as nationally recognized consultants. Both the substantive and skills curricula offer a range of developmentally appropriate programs for all of our lawyers: trainees, associates and partners. A primary benefit of the Institute is the centralized ability to oversee implementation and to ensure globally that all of our offices benefit from and take advantage of the Institute’s offerings. The full array of Legal Practice Institute Programs, with complete descriptions and listings by curriculum and seniority, is contained in the Institute's Catalog. The Catalog is a powerful tool for our lawyers seeking to refine skills, develop expertise or satisfy continuing legal education requirements in the jurisdictions where they practice.
Our commitment and investment in lawyer training are further evidenced by our broad definition of professional development. Informal training takes place through a combination of mentoring and coaching, the associate review process, pro bono work, and participation in practice groups. Our mentoring programs ensure that each junior and mid-level lawyer has a one-on-one mentoring relationship with a partner. The programs focus on accelerating our lawyers’ learning processes by translating legal knowledge into effective legal practice in order to improve the delivery of services to our clients. As part of our mentoring programs, associates have the opportunity to create an Associate Development Plan, a six-month plan for achieving certain targeted professional development goals.
The Associate Review Process also provides meaningful feedback and assistance in the professional development of our associates. This process is intended to be a constructive, proactive mechanism through which future growth is reviewed and discussed.
Our Commitment to Diversity
We know that clients’ needs can best be met by a diverse workforce. K&L Gates has implemented a number of programs to promote diversity, and we use every reasonable opportunity to articulate the business case as well as the moral case for diversity. We believe that K&L Gates is an industry leader. For example, in 2003, the firm appointed the profession’s first Chief Diversity Officer (“CDO”). This unprecedented appointment was noted in Diversity & The Bar in an article entitled “Above the Cut: Law Firms Raise the Bar” that featured this unique position and announced that the firm was among the industry’s leaders. Similarly, the firm’s appointment of the industry’s first Director of Professional and Personal Life Integration and the launching of its innovative Balanced Hours Initiative received acclaim throughout the profession. K&L Gates was honored among the best law firms for women by Working Mother magazine and Flex-Time Lawyers LLC in their first-ever “2007 Best Law Firms for Women” list, and the firm is the sole sponsor of the annual Nabrit Lecture Series at Howard Law School, which typically features remarks by a U.S. Supreme Court Justice.
At K&L Gates, diversity starts at the top. The firm is governed by a firmwide Management Committee whose Executive Committee is believed to be among the most diverse governance bodies in the legal profession, as its eight members include two women, one Asian-American man, and one African-American man.
Minority, women, disabled and GLBT lawyers have also become increasingly engaged at K&L Gates. They have taken on leadership roles that include service on the Management Committee and its Executive Committee and as Practice Group Coordinators. K&L Gates lawyers also regularly participate in and lead traditional and minority bar organizations and non-profit community organizations focused on serving minority communities and enhancing opportunities for minority youth. We fund a number of fellowships for diverse law students from ABA-accredited law schools. As a reflection of the progress the firm has made, two of K&L Gates’ predecessor firms ranked tenth and thirteenth out of 105 firms nationally in a recent Harvard Law School Women’s Law Association survey.
Establishing and maintaining a diverse and fully inclusive workforce is essential to a strong law firm. At K&L Gates, we are committed to fostering diversity to enrich the experience of our lawyers, reflect the communities in which we live and work, and better serve our clients. We encourage cooperation and teamwork and provide fair and ethical treatment of all employees regardless of race, color, gender, religion, age, national origin, political affiliation, sexual orientation, veteran status, or disability.
View K&L Gates' Diversity Newsletters
Our Engagement in Pro Bono and Public Service
We encourage our lawyers to provide pro bono legal representation and to participate in other charitable, community, educational and professional activities. The firm believes that every attorney has the professional responsibility to provide such services and encourages its members to undertake work in areas that are meaningful to them.
K&L Gates typically handles hundreds of pro bono matters a year, including litigating civil rights cases; establishing and advising non-profit organizations; assisting nonprofit community organizations in transactions; and representing indigent persons in consumer, landlord-tenant, family law and immigration matters. We directly aid individuals with limited means and substantial legal needs, provide legal counsel to help organizations advance their community service programs, and regularly accept court appointments to provide pro bono counsel in both civil and criminal matters.
The firm delivers pro bono services through dozens of organizations and legal services programs, including the American Civil Liberties Union, Battersea Legal Advice Centre, Dependency CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocate), Legal Momentum, Neighborhood Legal Services Association, New York Lawyers for the Public Interest, Partners for Water and Sanitation, Public Counsel, the San Francisco Lawyers Committee, Transitional Housing Corporation, Volunteer Advocates for Immigrant Justice, and Water Advocates. Many K&L Gates lawyers also provide pro bono services through local legal clinics such as Legal Services for the Homeless, a clinic established by K&L Gates lawyers at a Seattle homeless shelter.
K&L Gates has underscored its institutional support of pro bono activities in several ways, including the creation of a firmwide Pro Bono Committee chaired by a member of the firm’s Management Committee. The Committee coordinates the firm’s pro bono programs in collaboration with Pro Bono Coordinators in each K&L Gates office, assesses the effectiveness of the firm’s pro bono efforts and provides leadership to ensure fulfillment of our professional obligations as lawyers. K&L Gates is also a signatory to the Pro Bono Institute’s Law Firm Pro Bono Challenge, an aspirational pro bono standard for large law firms. The firm and its lawyers have provided leadership in articulating both the ethical principles and the business case for pro bono and in exploring the synergy between pro bono and diversity.
Beyond pro bono legal representation, our lawyers and staff perform varied public service work in the communities where they live and work. This includes serving as members of governing bodies of educational institutions, youth sports and arts organizations, environmental concerns, and health care and research institutions, as well as many social service and community organizations. Additionally, many of our lawyers and staff provide community service through an array of teaching, mentoring and other non-legal programs.
As a result of this leadership and pro bono commitment, the firm, several of its offices, and many of its lawyers have received awards for their pro bono and public service contributions.
View K&L Gates Pro Bono publications
Our Governance
The firm is governed by a Management Committee composed of the Chairman and Global Managing Partner; the Global Integration Partner; the Global Development Partner; the Managing Partner, Asia; the Managing Partner, Europe; Practice Area Leaders (“PALs”) for the Corporate and Transactional, Financial Services, Intellectual Property, Litigation and Dispute Resolution, and Policy and Regulatory fields; and Administrative Partners from each of its offices. The Committee has assigned eight of its members to serve on the Executive Committee, which advises the Management Committee on issues relating to strategic positioning and integration. The firm also maintains over 30 practice groups, each of which is served by one or more Coordinators who report to the PALs on the management of the practice.
The firm’s professional management includes Chief Officers in Finance, Operations, Information, Marketing and Recruitment and Development and a variety of directors and other senior managers responsible for core business functions in a complex, professional services organization. This central management is complemented by Directors of Administration in each of our offices and office support staff.