2022 DIVERSITY DATABASE UNDERWRITER Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP

The result of 2018’s largest merger, Hunton Andrews Kurth pairs two firms—each with over a century of history—that had been growing by leaps and bounds in the past few years. Mid-Atlantic-based Hunton & Williams brought with it leading global practices in privacy and cybersecurity, energy, financial services, and real estate. Houston’s Andrews Kurth Kenyon had recently grown from a Lonestar State stalwart to an international firm renowned for its energy, environmental, IP, and privacy practices.

A Tale of Two Firms

Though founded more than 1,000 miles away, Hunton & Williams and Andrews Kurth Kenyon were in many ways mirror images of one another. Eppa Hunton, Randolph Williams, and two others founded their firm in Richmond, VA, in 1901 and quickly attracted banks, railroads, energy companies, and utilities as clients. Just a year later, Frank Andrews and Thomas Ball founded a firm in Houston representing railroad bigwigs like Houston Belt, Terminal Railroad, and the Gulf Coast Lines. In its early days, Andrew’s firm was heavily involved in the city’s development, helping secure funding to build the Port of Houston and working with the Houston Land Corporation. John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil—which controlled some 90 percent of the country’s oil production—was a client of both firms until the Supreme Court ordered the company to be broken up in 1911. 

Both legacy firms began expanding from their home bases in the second half of the 20th century. Today, Hunton Andrews Kurth boasts over 900 lawyers across 12 domestic and 6 international offices. The firm is particularly well known in the south and is in the Top 20 of Vault’s Regional rankings for both Texas and the South Atlantic.

Feeling Energized

Hunton Andrews Kurth practices across dozens of areas, including banking and finance, bankruptcy/restructuring, corporate matters, energy, environmental law, health care and life sciences, insurance, IP, labor and employment, litigation, M&A, privacy, private equity, real estate, tax, and white collar defense, to name some.

The firm has a robust energy practice, handling everything from litigation to permits to project finance to M&A to regulatory matters to tax. The firm takes an interdisciplinary approach, with lawyers from the energy space collaborating with those in antitrust, bankruptcy, IP, labor and employee benefits, and real estate. The firm’s energy practice includes more than 400 attorneys. 

Environmental law is another of the firm’s fortes. The firm’s bench boasts experience working at the EPA, DOJ, DOI, DOE, and other government roles. Among industries the firm covers include automobile, chemical, energy, oil and gas, manufacturing, real estate development, semiconductor, and steel. Hunton Andrews Kurth is ranked among the Top 10 in Vault’s Environmental Law Practice Area ranking.

• Represented Yahoo! (now Verizon) in all aspects of its nation-state and criminal cybersecurity attacks that compromised approximately three billion user accounts. We defended the company in over 40 consumer class actions across several districts. We also managed the company’s responses to investigations by state, federal, and international regulators and by business partners and provided regulatory and litigation counsel for Yahoo!
• Represented Healthcare Realty Trust in its $18 billion combination with Healthcare Trust of America, a deal that will create one of the nation’s largest owners of medical office buildings.
• Acted as program counsel to Ginnie Mae in connection with 249 Multiclass Securities transactions, representing the issuance of more than $159 billion of government guaranteed REMIC securities backed by government-insured mortgage loans, including participations in government-insured reverse mortgage loans.
• Represented Wabash Valley Resources in connection with the sale of 20% interest to Nikola Corporation related to a clean hydrogen project being developed in West Terre Haute, Indiana. The project plans to use solid waste byproducts such as petroleum coke combined with biomass to produce clean, sustainable hydrogen for transportation fuel and base-load electricity generation while capturing CO2 emissions for permanent underground sequestration.

• Mansfield Rule™ 3.0, 4.0, and 5.0 Certified Plus, 2020-2022—Diversity Lab
• Corporate Equality Index 100% rating; Named a “Best Place to Work for LGBTQ+ Equality,” 2021-2022—Human Rights Campaign 
• Recognized “for its commitment toward social progress and exceeding diversity-related benchmarks,” 2021-2022—Bloomberg Law Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion Framework 
• The firm received LCLD’s “Top Performer” and “Compass Award,” 2021-2022—Leadership Council on Legal Diversity
• Recognition as a Leading Firm for Associate Satisfaction, 2021 and 2022—Chambers Associate