K&L Gates LLP

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

Multiplicity

As the new millennium dawned, a flurry of mergers created K&L Gates. In January 2007, Seattle’s Preston Gates & Ellis joined Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Nicholson Graham (the product of the 2005 pairing of Pittsburgh-based Kirkpatrick & Lockhart and London’s Nicholson Graham & Jones). A year later, the firm merged with Hughes & Luce, increasing its 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 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. Since then, the firm added offices in Nashville, Luxembourg, Dublin, and Kansas City, MO.

Diversifying

K&L Gates offers a fully integrated, full-service platform serving clients across diverse industries and geographies. Rather than relying on a small group of cornerstone clients, the firm’s longstanding commitment to diversification has created a resilient, well-balanced revenue base. This model enables K&L Gates to deliver advice that combines industry-specific insight with local market knowledge and a global perspective.

The firm maintains a global corporate practice including more than 400 M&A lawyers delivering sophisticated transactional advice worldwide. The firm’s clients include Global 500, Fortune 100, and FTSE 100 companies, as well as emerging companies, investment funds, and other high-growth enterprises on a broad range of domestic and cross-border transactions. K&L Gates offers extensive sector experience in energy, financial services, healthcare, infrastructure, life sciences, manufacturing, technology, telecommunications, and transportation, the firm brings market insights to complex corporate matters. 

An example of the firm’s strengths, K&L Gates’ renewable energy and energy transition practice advises clients across solar, wind, biomass, hydropower, geothermal, and emerging technologies. Leveraging its cross-practice approach, the firm supports clients on complex matters—M&A, project development and financing, IP, licensing, regulatory compliance, tax, and related corporate and commercial issues—to deliver commercially focused solutions throughout the full life cycle of energy projects and investments.

The Best Place

K&L Gates is dedicated to pro bono: The firm devotes more than 40,000 hours to pro bono matters each year. This pro bono work includes firmwide initiatives, such as K&L Gates for Equal Justice, which focuses on voting rights, criminal justice reform, and equal justice for indigenous people; the Cyber Civil Rights Legal Project, which assists victims of nonconsensual pornography; and the Anti-Human Trafficking Initiative, which helps survivors  of human trafficking and organizations that support them. 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 AI laboratory behind the experimental online chatbot ChatGPT. Assisted Microsoft with its initial $1 billion equity investment in OpenAI in 2019 and subsequent investment in 2021.
• Represented Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in its record-setting patent infringement suit against chipmaker Marvell Technology Group Ltd. and Marvell Semiconductor Inc. that culminated in a $750 million settlement for CMU.
• Led a pro bono cyber civil rights legal project, securing an $8.9 million jury award for victims of non-consensual image distribution (revenge porn), setting a significant precedent for civil remedies in emerging online privacy and harassment law.
• Advised Vietnam’s national flag carrier Vietnam Airlines on its agreement to purchase 50 Boeing 737-8 narrow-body aircraft, a transaction exceeding $8 billion in value and among the largest aircraft orders in the airline’s history.

• Innovation Icon, 2025—BTI Consulting
• Shortlisted for two Innovative Lawyers North America Awards, 2025—Financial Times
• Client Service A-Team, 2025—BTI Consulting
• Nearly 65 practice rankings, including 13 nationwide rankings, and nearly 180 lawyers recognized, 2025—Chambers USA
• Washington Powerhouse, 2025—Law360