Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP, also known as Hale & Dorr and WilmerHale, is an international law firm with offices in the United States, Europe and Asia. It is co-headquartered in Washington, D.C. and Boston. It was formed in 2004 through the merger of the Boston-based firm Hale and Dorr and the Washington-based firm Wilmer Cutler & Pickering, and employs more than 1,000 attorneys worldwide. Notable alumni include former FBI Director Robert Mueller, Special Counsel to the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election; Ken Salazar, United States Ambassador to Mexico; Boyden Gray, former White House Counsel and United States Ambassador to the European Union; and Alejandro Mayorkas, United States Secretary of Homeland Security. The firm currently employs several prominent attorneys, including Seth Waxman, former

Solicitor General of the United States The solicitor general of the United States is the fourth-highest-ranking official in the United States Department of Justice. Elizabeth Prelogar has been serving in the role since October 28, 2021. The United States solicitor general represent ...

;

Preet Bharara Preetinder Singh Bharara (; born October 13, 1968) is an Indian-born American lawyer, author, podcaster and former federal prosecutor who served as the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York from 2009 to 2017. He is curren ...

, former United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York; Ken Salazar, former United States senator from Colorado and

United States Secretary of the Interior The United States secretary of the interior is the head of the United States Department of the Interior. The secretary and the Department of the Interior are responsible for the management and conservation of most federal land along with natur ...

; Robert M. Kimmitt, former Deputy Secretary of the US Department of the Treasury; and Jamie Gorelick, former United States Deputy Attorney General.

History

Hale and Dorr, 1918–2004

Hale and Dorr was founded in Boston in 1918 by Richard Hale, Dudley Huntington Dorr, Frank Grinnell, Roger Swaim and John Maguire. Reginald Heber Smith, author of the seminal work Justice and the Poor and a pioneer in the American legal aid movement, joined the firm in 1919 and served as managing partner for thirty years. Hale and Dorr gained national recognition in 1954 when partner Joseph Welch, assisted by associate James St. Clair and John Kimball, Jr., represented the

U.S. Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cl ...

on a pro bono basis during the historic Army-McCarthy hearings. In 1974, James D. St. Clair represented President

Richard Nixon Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as a representative and senator from California and was ...

before the Supreme Court of the United States in ''

United States v. Nixon ''United States v. Nixon'', 418 U.S. 683 (1974), was a List of landmark court decisions in the United States, landmark Supreme Court of the United States, United States Supreme Court case that resulted in a unanimous decision against President ...

''. In 1988, partner Paul Brountas chaired the presidential campaign of Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis, and in 1990, senior partner William Weld was elected governor. The firm has had a long relationship with nearby Harvard Law School, home of the WilmerHale Legal Services Center. WilmerHale's DC office

In 1988, the law firm established a subsidiary as a registered investment adviser. Initially known as ''Haldor Investment Advisors, L.P.'', and then ''Hale Dorr Wealth Advisers''. In 2008 ''Hale Dorr Wealth Advisors'' became ''Silver Bridge''.

Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering, 1962–2004

Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering was founded in Washington in 1962 by former Cravath attorneys Lloyd Cutler and John Pickering, along with a senior lawyer, Richard H. Wilmer. Cutler, who later served as White House Counsel to Presidents

Jimmy Carter James Earl Carter Jr. (born October 1, 1924) is an American politician who served as the 39th president of the United States from 1977 to 1981. A member of the Democratic Party, he previously served as the 76th governor of Georgia from 1 ...

and

Bill Clinton William Jefferson Clinton ( né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He previously served as governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and agai ...

, founded the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law in 1962 and served on its executive committee until 1987. In the 1980s, Cutler led the founding of the Southern Africa Legal Services and Legal Education Project, to aid South African lawyers who fought to implement the rule of law during

apartheid Apartheid (, especially South African English: , ; , "aparthood") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was ...

. From 1981 to 1993, partner C. Boyden Gray, a prominent member of The Federalist Society, left the firm to serve as White House Counsel to Vice President and President George H. W. Bush. In 2003, partner Jamie Gorelick began serving as a member of the 9/11 Commission.

Combined firm, 2004–present

The two firms merged to form Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr in 2004, with headquarters now in both Boston and Washington. In 2010, the law firm relocated its administrative support base to a new campus in

Dayton, Ohio Dayton () is the sixth-largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Montgomery County. A small part of the city extends into Greene County. The 2020 U.S. census estimate put the city population at 137,644, while Greater D ...

as it sought to streamline internal business operations across its many offices. The office houses more than 200 employees from existing WilmerHale offices and new employees from the Dayton area. Individuals in the Business Services Center include administrative support staff, bringing together services such as finance, human resources, information technology services, operations, document review and management, and practice management, which will provide improved efficiencies for administrative teams and the firm, and reduce significant operational expenses.

Reputation

According to one study examining political donations by large white shoe firms, WilmerHale was ranked as the most liberal out of the top twenty prestigious law firms in the nation. ''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...

'' ranked WilmerHale as the #1 Top Workplace in DC in 2019, and the firm has earned a Top Workplace for 8 consecutive years, and noted that the firm "has played a leading role in reimagining what 'Big Law' can be." ''

The American Lawyer ''The American Lawyer'' is a monthly legal magazine and website published by ALM Media. The periodical and its parent company, ALM (then American Lawyer Media), were founded in 1979 by Steven Brill.The American Lawyer's'' biennial Litigation Department of the Year contest honoring law firms considered the “absolute best in the industry when it comes to litigation prowess”, they highlighted that the firm has a strong reputation in the most important practice areas such as public policy and legislative affairs, regulation, antitrust, intellectual property and international trade and that WilmerHale is home to some of the most well-known appellate and Supreme Court litigators in the country.

Clients

''A Civil Action''

In the late 1980s, Hale and Dorr partner Jerome Facher represented

Beatrice Foods Beatrice Foods Company was a major American food processing company founded in 1894. In 1987, its international food operations were sold to Reginald Lewis, a corporate attorney, creating TLC Beatrice International, after which the majority of ...

in a suit by eight families from Woburn,

Massachusetts Massachusetts (Massachusett: ''Muhsachuweesut Massachusett_writing_systems.html" ;"title="nowiki/> məhswatʃəwiːsət.html" ;"title="Massachusett writing systems">məhswatʃəwiːsət">Massachusett writing systems">məhswatʃəwiːsət'' En ...

who claimed that Beatrice, along with W.R. Grace, had polluted the town's water supply, resulting in an elevated number of leukemia cases and immune-system disorders. The case was memorialized in the book ''

A Civil Action ''A Civil Action'' is a 1995 non-fiction book by Jonathan Harr about a water contamination case in Woburn, Massachusetts, in the 1980s. The book became a best-seller. It won the National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction. The case is ...

'', by Jonathan Harr, and in a movie of the same name starring

Robert Duvall Robert Selden Duvall (; born January 5, 1931) is an American actor and filmmaker. His career spans more than seven decades and he is considered one of the greatest American actors of all time. He is the recipient of an Academy Award, four Gold ...

as Facher and John Travolta as plaintiffs' lawyer Jan Schlichtmann. Upon further discovery, the EPA took the case on and W.R. Grace was successfully indicted for making false statements. Both W. R. Grace and Beatrice Foods paid a total $64.9M to clean up the contaminated sites in Woburn.

Enron and WorldCom reports

In the wake of news articles raising concerns about transactions between

Enron Enron Corporation was an American energy, commodities, and services company based in Houston, Texas. It was founded by Kenneth Lay in 1985 as a merger between Lay's Houston Natural Gas and InterNorth, both relatively small regional compani ...

and its

CFO The chief financial officer (CFO) is an officer of a company or organization that is assigned the primary responsibility for managing the company's finances, including financial planning, management of financial risks, record-keeping, and financ ...

Andy Fastow Andrew Stuart "Andy" Fastow (born December 22, 1961) is a convicted felon and former financier who was the chief financial officer of Enron Corporation, an energy trading company based in Houston, Texas, until he was fired shortly before the com ...

, lawyers from Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering represented a special investigative committee of Enron's board of directors in an internal investigation into those transactions. The resulting report, known as the " Powers Report," laid out the facts that have been the predicate for much of the public discussion of Enron since that time. Similarly, after

WorldCom MCI, Inc. (subsequently Worldcom and MCI WorldCom) was a telecommunications company. For a time, it was the second largest long-distance telephone company in the United States, after AT&T. Worldcom grew largely by acquiring other telecommunic ...

's announcement that it would have to restate financial statements, the firm represented a special investigative committee of WorldCom's board of directors in performing an internal investigation into the accounting irregularities. The investigation resulted in a widely covered written report that detailed a variety of accounting issues as well as the role of management and the board of directors.

Apple Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. et al

WilmerHale counseled

Apple Inc. Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Apple is the largest technology company by revenue (totaling in 2021) and, as of June 2022, is the world's biggest company ...

in its hotly contested smartphone patent dispute with Samsung Electronics Co. The two parties reached a settlement in 2018 after a seven-year-long battle that began when Apple accused

Samsung The Samsung Group (or simply Samsung) ( ko, 삼성 ) is a South Korean multinational manufacturing conglomerate headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul, South Korea. It comprises numerous affiliated businesses, most of them united under the ...

of infringing numerous design and utility patents related to the iPhone.https://www.law360.com/articles/1406459

PerkinElmer’s Acquisition of BioLegend

In 2021, WilmerHale represented PerkinElmer in its acquisition of life sciences company BioLegend for $5.25 billion, the largest acquisition to date for PerkinElmer. President and CEO of PerkinElmer Prahlad Singh said the deal will "push science and discovery forward."

Other notable and controversial clients

In 1986, Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering represented corporate raider Ivan Boesky in high-profile

Department of Justice A justice ministry, ministry of justice, or department of justice is a ministry or other government agency in charge of the administration of justice. The ministry or department is often headed by a minister of justice (minister for justice in a ...

and SEC proceedings, as well as multiple class actions based on his participation in insider trading violations. Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering represented

Swiss banks Banking in Switzerland dates to the early eighteenth century through Switzerland's merchant trade and has, over the centuries, grown into a complex, regulated, and international industry. Banking is seen as emblematic of Switzerland, along with ...

accused of profiting from the Holocaust in their settlement negotiations with plaintiffs. The firm also represented

Siemens AG Siemens AG ( ) is a German multinational conglomerate corporation and the largest industrial manufacturing company in Europe headquartered in Munich with branch offices abroad. The principal divisions of the corporation are ''Industry'', ''E ...

Krupp AG The Krupp family (see pronunciation), a prominent 400-year-old German dynasty from Essen, is notable for its production of steel, artillery, ammunition and other armaments. The family business, known as Friedrich Krupp AG (Friedrich Krupp A ...

, and other German companies accused of exploiting forced laborers during the Nazi era. Since 2005, WilmerHale has represented Senator William Frist in regard to an SEC insider trading investigation. WilmerHale was hired to represent PepsiCo in the SEC investigation related to the departure of PepsiCo general counsel Maura Smith. In the course of this representation, a WilmerHale attorney inadvertently e-mailed a confidential legal memorandum to a ''Wall Street Journal'' reporter as part of an internal communication to other attorneys working on the matter, which made several details of the investigation public. In 2022, ex- Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison hired WilmerHale to represent her in the federal probe into the cryptocurrency exchange FTX's collapse, in which Ellison entered into a plea deal with the Office of the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York.

''Pro bono''

Both Hale and Dorr and Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering have a long history of involvement in '' pro bono'' work. WilmerHale has ranked at or near the top of ''

The American Lawyer ''The American Lawyer'' is a monthly legal magazine and website published by ALM Media. The periodical and its parent company, ALM (then American Lawyer Media), were founded in 1979 by Steven Brill.Algerian Six", a group of men who fell under suspicion of planning to attack the US embassy in Bosnia and who are now held in the

Guantanamo Bay detainment camp The Guantanamo Bay detention camp ( es, Centro de detención de la bahía de Guantánamo) is a United States military prison located within Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, also referred to as Guantánamo, GTMO, and Gitmo (), on the coast of Guant ...

. In 2006, attorney Melissa Hoffer, then part of the team with WilmerHale, delivered a speech in Caen, France, critical of U.S. detainee policy. Other WilmerHale lawyers participating in the case include Stephen Oleskey and Rob Kirsch. In January 2007, Cully Stimson, deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, criticized WilmerHale and other major law firms for representing ''"the very terrorists who hit their bottom line back in 2001,"'' and questioned whether such work was really being done pro bono or might actually receive funding from shadowy sources."Bush Lawyer Blasts Law Firms For Representing Detainees"
post by Peter Lattman on Law Blog '' all Street Journal' on the cases, trends and personalities of interest to the business community, January 12, 2007 In a ''

Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...

'' editorial criticizing Stimson, Harvard Law School professor (and former

United States Solicitor General The solicitor general of the United States is the fourth-highest-ranking official in the United States Department of Justice. Elizabeth Prelogar has been serving in the role since October 28, 2021. The United States solicitor general represent ...

under President Reagan)

Charles Fried Charles Anthony Fried (born April 15, 1935) is an American jurist and lawyer. He served as United States Solicitor General under President Ronald Reagan from 1985 to 1989. He is a professor at Harvard Law School and has been a visiting profess ...

wrote: In December 2007, Seth Waxman made the oral argument to the Supreme Court in ''

Boumediene v. Bush ''Boumediene v. Bush'', 553 U.S. 723 (2008), was a writ of ''habeas corpus'' submission made in a civilian court of the United States on behalf of Lakhdar Boumediene, a naturalized citizen of Bosnia and Herzegovina, held in military detention by ...

'' which upheld habeas corpus rights for detainees at Guantanamo Bay. In early December 2022 Caroline Ellison, former CEO of Alameda Research, hired Stephanie Avakian as her lead attorney.

References

{{Reflist, 30em

External links

Wilmer HaleWilmer Hale History

Long, Long Law Firm Names Grow Short and Snappy
, from ''

The Boston Globe ''The Boston Globe'' is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper has won a total of 27 Pulitzer Prizes, and has a total circulation of close to 300,000 print and digital subscribers. ''The Boston Glob ...

''
WilmerHale: A Merger's Tale
, from ''Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly'' Intellectual property law firms Biopharmaceutical law firms Law firms established in 2004 Law firms based in Washington, D.C. Law firms based in Boston 2004 establishments in the United States