2024 DIVERSITY DATABASE UNDERWRITER Alston & Bird

Alston & Bird is home to more than 800 lawyers located across the United States in 12 domestic offices and three international locations. The firm has been recognized for its strength in such areas as healthcare, privacy and data security, real estate, and tax. 

Shopping for Growth

Atlanta-based Alston & Bird’s predecessor firms date back to 1893. Nearly a century later, the firm known as Alston, Miller & Gaines merged with Jones, Bird & Howell and adopted the name Alston & Bird. The firm’s operations remained in Georgia, where it represented institutions such as CNN, Emory University, and Augusta National founder Bobby Jones, a former firm partner, until the debut of its Washington, DC, office in 1990. A series of mergers and expansion efforts beginning in the late 1990s (and continuing into the present) increased the firm’s domestic footprint to California, New York, North Carolina, and Texas. Overseas, the firm opened its first international office in Beijing, followed by an office in London and another in Brussels to focus on payments and data privacy. The firm has also recently added offices in Century City and Chicago.

Business Savvy

Alston & Bird’s eight major practice areas are broken down into dozens of subspecialties, ranging from ADR litigation to water resources issues. The firm’s industry focus includes the energy, healthcare, financial services, hospitality, infrastructure, special services, technology and insurance sectors, as well as colleges and universities. The firm also has a dedicated subprime mortgage markets group.

Attorneys at Alston & Bird help clients resolve some of the most challenging issues facing businesses today. The firm’s nationally recognized Privacy & Data Security group represents a full range of clients, identifying their objectives at every step of the information lifecycle, which includes the collection, use, and protection of customer data. The group’s cybersecurity attorneys are called on by large, global corporations to assist in both preventing and responding to security incidents and data breaches, including all varieties of network intrusion and data loss events.

Another leading practice is Alston & Bird’s Finance group, which is centered on a lending core and bolstered by niche specialty areas, including corporate trust, commercial mortgage servicing, and structured finance. Representing the most active issuers, originators, servicers, trustees, master servicers, fund managers, investors, rating agencies, and insurers, the team has experience in structuring and closing complex transactions across a wide variety of asset classes. The practice includes not only long-time strengths such as debt finance but also securitization, private equity funds, and emerging areas such as aircraft and equipment financing.

Simply the Best

Its employees have spoken, and Alston & Bird is a pretty great place to work. The firm has been named to Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For 25 years in a row— the only law firm to be so honored. Values, leadership, trust, and camaraderie were the categories included in the Fortune survey.

• Served as lead class action defense counsel to Toyota in its Unintended Acceleration MDL in California, one of the largest MDLs in U.S. history, following widely publicized vehicle recalls.
• Represented Dell in the largest appraisal proceeding ever filed in Delaware Chancery Court, with owners of over 38 million shares of Dell stock seeking to have the Chancery Court determine the fair value of their shares.
• Represented Nokia against Apple in several patent litigation and U.S. International Trade Commission proceedings covering smartphone and touchscreen technology.
• Served as Examiner for the bankruptcy examination of Enron, after its highly publicized 2001 collapse.

• Chambers USA: America’s Leading Lawyers for Business, 68 practice rankings and 149 leading lawyer listings, 2023 — Chambers
• 100 Best Companies to Work For, 2024 - Fortune
• 100% Rating in Corporate Equality Index, 2023-2024 - Human Rights Campaign
• Mansfield Rule 6.0 Certified, 2023 - Diversity Lab
• 100 Companies that Care, 2023 – People