No. of offices 9 Major practice areas General practice Revenue 650 million USD (2015) Founder Thurman Arnold Number of offices 9 | No. of attorneys 700+ Company type LLP Number of attorneys 700 Founded 1946 | |
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Date founded 1946 (Washington, D.C.) Headquarters Washington, D.C., United States Profiles | ||
Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP is an international law firm based in Washington, D.C. Arnold & Porter is well known for its trial, corporate, and antitrust work, and for its pro bono commitments. Founded in 1946, it is one of the largest law firms by revenue in the world today.
Contents
History
Arnold & Porter was founded in 1946 by New Deal veterans Thurman Arnold, a former Yale Law School professor and U.S. Court of Appeals Judge on the D.C. Circuit, and Abe Fortas, another former Yale Law School professor who later became a Supreme Court Justice. In 1947, Paul A. Porter, a former Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission joined the firm and it was renamed Arnold, Fortas & Porter. In 1965, Abe Fortas' name was dropped from the firm's moniker after his ascension to the Supreme Court.
In November 2016, Arnold & Porter announced that it would be merging with New York-based firm Kaye Scholer to form Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP, with approximately 1000 attorneys across nine domestic and four international offices. The merger took effect on January 1, 2017.
Noteworthy cases and deals
Prominent cases the firm has been involved with include its work as counsel to Clarence Earl Gideon in the landmark case of Gideon v. Wainwright, subject of the Edgar Award-winning book Gideon's Trumpet by Anthony Lewis. The firm also represented the survivors of the Buffalo Creek Flood, one of the worst mining disasters in U.S. history. Their representation was the subject of the book Buffalo Creek Disaster by Gerald M. Stern, which is required reading in many law schools. In addition, it was the only significant law firm to represent the victims of Joseph McCarthy and the "loyalty review boards" that ruined the careers of many loyal government employees. All three founders of the firm were so upset by the use of secret evidence that at one point the firm's lawyers were spending half of their time fighting these cases.
More recently, Arnold & Porter successfully defended Random House from a claim of copyright infringement against The Da Vinci Code written by Dan Brown. Arnold & Porter served as outside counsel to the Independent Review Committee as it scrutinized the management style of Lawrence Small, the former Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution who resigned when some details of excessive expenses became public. The firm was also counsel to Philip Morris in the mass tort litigation of the 1990s, WorldCom executive Scott Sullivan, Martha Stewart, and CBS in its litigation against Howard Stern.
The firm also successfully represented the government of Venezuela in its case against the United States' Clean Air Act, on the grounds that the CAA violated World Trade Organization agreements.
Arnold & Porter represented US Airways in its merger with America West. Arnold & Porter also assisted SBC Communications Inc. in its acquisition of AT&T Corp., forming the new AT&T Inc.
The firm is also noted for its pro bono work including assisting the family of Lt. Henry Ossian Flipper in obtaining the first posthumous Presidential pardon in U.S. history, and representation of Ukrainian mail order bride Nataliya Fox against international marriage broker Encounters International in a groundbreaking case that helped to establish the rights of such women. The firm is co-counsel with the DC Prisoners' Project of the Washington Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs which represents prisoners at ADX Florence who allege deficiencies in psychiatric evaluation and care in Cunningham v. Federal Bureau of Prisons.