K&L Gates LLP

K&L Gates is one of the largest law firms in the world, with close to 2,000 lawyers across five continents. Among the firm’s top-notch practices are corporate; energy and infrastructure; finance; intellectual property; labor, employment, and workplace safety; litigation and dispute resolution; policy and regulatory; real estate; and asset management and investment funds.

Multiplicity

The new millennium saw a flurry of mergers, which formed the firm we now call K&L Gates. In January 2007, Seattle’s Preston Gates & Ellis got hitched to Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Nicholson Graham (itself the product of one of the largest U.S.-U.K. mergers in legal history: the 2005 pairing of Pittsburgh-based Kirkpatrick & Lockhart and London’s Nicholson Graham & Jones). A year later, the reshaped firm merged with Texas-based Hughes & Luce, increasing K&L Gates’ presence in the Lone Star State. In July 2008, the firm combined with Kennedy Covington Lobdell & Hickman, a household name in Carolina legal circles; the merger gave K&L Gates a significant presence throughout the Carolinas. The addition of Chicago firm Bell, Boyd & Lloyd’s 250 lawyers and lobbyists in March 2009 bolstered K&L Gates’ ranks in Chicago and DC. In 2013, K&L Gates merged with Australian firm Middletons, giving the firm a presence in the Land Down Under. They have added offices in Nashville, Luxembourg, Dublin, and Kansas City, MO, over the past two years.

Diversifying

K&L Gates takes a full-service approach to its work, with clients across many industries. Unlike some big firms that rely on a few key clients for the bulk of their billings, K&L Gates’ policy of diversification means that its revenues are spread widely across many clients. Among its reputable practices, K&L Gates boasts an impressive renewable energy practice. The firm’s clients work across solar, wind, biomass, hydropower, geothermal, and other sectors, and the firm pulls in its experience across industries to provide counsel on everything from acquisitions, financing, IP, licensing, regulatory matters, tax, and much more.

The firm is home to a large corporate practice—in fact, its M&A practice has 500 lawyers alone. Among the firm’s corporate clients are those from the Global 500, Fortune 100, and FTSE 100, as well as startups, investment funds, and individuals. The firm’s corporate lawyers work across myriad industries, such as energy, financial services, healthcare, infrastructure, life sciences, manufacturing, technology, telecommunications, and transportation. The firm did well riding out the pandemic, seeing increases in cross-office and cross-practice work, inter-office revenue, and profitability over those years.

The Best Place

K&L Gates is dedicated to pro bono: Over the past few years, the firm devoted more than 46,000 hours to pro bono matters. This included the work done through firmwide initiatives, including K&L Gates for Equal Justice, which focuses on voting rights, criminal justice reform, and justice for indigenous people; the Cyber Civil Rights Legal Project, which assists victims of nonconsensual pornography; and Anti-Human Trafficking Initiative, which aims to help victims of human trafficking. The firm also partners with dozens of community organizations, and on an individual basis, all employees are encouraged to volunteer and provide services within their own communities.

• Advised Microsoft Corp. on its further investment in San Francisco-based OpenAI, the artificial intelligence laboratory behind the experimental online chatbot ChatGPT. Also assisted Microsoft on its initial $1 billion equity investment in OpenAI in 2019 and later investment in 2021.
• Advised Silicon Motion Technology Corporation, an Asia-based global leader in developing NAND flash controllers for solid state storage devices, on entering into a $3.8 billion cross-border take-private acquisition with MaxLinear, Inc., a California-based leading provider of radio frequency, analog, digital, and mixed-signal integrated circuits.
• Represented Carnegie Mellon University in its long-standing patent infringement suit against chipmaker Marvell Technology Group Ltd. and Marvell Semiconductor Inc. which culminated in a $750 million settlement for CMU.

• Commercial Litigation Law Firm of the Year, 2023; Corporate Law Firm of the Year, 2022—U.S. News—Best Lawyers® “Best Law Firms”
• Mansfield Rule 5.0 Certification Plus status, 2022—Diversity Lab
• Corporate Equality Index “Top Law Firm for Equality,” 2022—Human Rights Campaign 
• 36 practice rankings, including 12 nationwide rankings, and more than 120 lawyers recognized, 2022—Chambers USA 
• Top Performer and Compass Award designations, 2022—Leadership Council on Legal Diversity