Overview
K&L Gates (“K&L Gates”) seeks to hire exceptional lawyers who will become a part of the firm’s practice, help us expand, challenge our limits and push us to grow into the future with our clients. In addition to hiring associates through our summer associate, new associate and judicial clerkship programs, we also look to hire experienced lawyers from government service, private practice and corporate counsel backgrounds. Expressions of interest in our lateral associate program should be directed to the recruiting contact in the respective K&L Gates office.
K&L Gates seeks practitioners who will expand the firm’s expertise in a broad spectrum of practice areas. The firm has grown by the addition of individual lawyers, small groups and even larger mergers and acquisitions. Over the last twenty years, K&L Gates has grown in size from a firm of five offices to a firm with twenty-two offices and nearly 1,400 lawyers internationally.
K&L Gates practices law on an integrated and firm-wide basis. As it now exists, K&L Gates has ascended to the front rank of firms nationally in a host of practice areas. Examples include investment management, securities enforcement, insurance coverage, mortgage banking, and ESOP transactions. Few short lists are formed in these areas of practice on which K&L Gates is not included.
Lawyers at K&L Gates work in a collegial environment. We offer all our lawyers an integrated and strong administrative team of legal assistants, secretaries and administrative staff. Each office of K&L Gates draws upon the firm’s large administrative resources to provide superior practice support to its lawyers and ultimately to the firm’s clients. Award-winning marketing and technology departments provide exceptional resources and support to K&L Gates lawyers and their practice.
K&L Gates is committed to maintaining a collaborative work environment and to fostering the professional development of all its employees, encouraging cooperation and teamwork and providing fair, equal and ethical treatment of all employees and employment issues, regardless of race, color, sex, religion, age, national origin, political affiliation, sexual orientation, veteran status or disability.
Technology
K&L Gates invests in the use of technology to maintain competitive advantage in the marketplace for legal services and to support the practice and business of law. K&L Gates has received CIO Magazine’s prestigious “CIO 100 Award” three 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 is one of only three law firms to be recognized in the Award’s 19-year history and is the only law firm in the world to receive three consecutive CIO 100 Awards.
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. Each K&L Gates office utilizes state-of-the-art technology that provides all attorneys with access to a wide range of computer-based productivity tools, including: e-mail, personal digital assistants, office automation suites, document repositories, practice and litigation-based applications, and full video- and teleconferencing capabilities. The firm facilitates the use of web-based technologies as a communications and collaboration tool for both client and internal communications. K&L Gates has a strong belief in the value of technology and is committed to using it to facilitate client service and law firm business.
Marketing
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 reinforced by continuous and active measures to support, enhance and bolster the valued relationships we have with our clients.
The recent combination creating K&L Gates was made, first and foremost, with our clients in mind. K&L Gates will continue to build vigorously upon the existing relationships with clients and communities we serve. A significant outcome of the combination is that K&L Gates is better positioned to serve clients with an expanded global platform, increased strength in complex and specialized areas of legal practice, and myriad industry relationships and experiences.
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. Our marketing team collaborates with our recruitment professionals to enhance our outreach to law students and lateral associate and partner candidates, and with our diversity personnel 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.
The trade media have long recognized the efforts of the firm’s marketing and brand positioning. Marketing the Law Firm, an American Lawyer Media publication, in recognition of the firm’s overall marketing and communications function, has listed us within the top 20 of its “MLF 50” for the past two years. The “MLF 50” refers to the 50 law firms that are ranked according to their ability to define, distinguish, develop and deliver their firms’ marketing and communications programs. In recent years, K&L Gates’ two predecessor firms received numerous recognitions: No. 8 in the “MLF 50”; “MLF’s” first-place winner in its Most Innovative Visual Identity awards program.; a 2006 Ad Q Award for Outstanding Advertising, in recognition of the advertising that achieved the highest readership response, as measured against all other ads appearing in the December 2005 Corporate Counsel; and the 2005 American Graphic Design Award for the firm’s national “Law Looking Forward” advertising campaign.