2024 DIVERSITY DATABASE PREMIUM SPONSOR Mayer Brown LLP

Mayer Brown is a law firm with offices across the Americas, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. It employs more than 1,900 lawyers—making it among the 25 largest law firm workforces in the world. Known for its top-flight corporate, finance, and appellate work, Mayer Brown serves many of the world’s largest companies, including a significant proportion of the Fortune 100, FTSE 100, CAC 40, DAX, Hang Seng, and Nikkei index companies, and more than half of the world’s largest banks.

I’ve Got to See a Man About a Horse

It was the summer of 1879, and a Chicago court was hearing arguments about the sale of a lame horse. The defendant was David Mayer, a wealthy local merchant. His attorney was his younger brother, Levy, who had just graduated from Yale Law School. The Mayers lost. They appealed to a higher court, as did their adversary, a 30-year-old, self-taught Czech lawyer named Adolf Kraus. The Mayers felt they should have prevailed; Kraus believed he was entitled to $200, not the $25 he’d been awarded. The appeal ended in a settlement two years later, under most unusual circumstances: the younger Mayer had impressed Kraus in the courtroom, so Kraus asked him to form a partnership. Each man contributed $100 to satisfy the pending claim and erase any conflict of interest. They quickly discovered that they worked well together, with Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw growing over the years into the international firm that Mayer Brown is today.

How Appealing

Although Mayer Brown’s practices cover everything from banking to real estate, the firm stands out for being one of the first to establish a dedicated Supreme Court practice, which it formed in the early 1980s with recruits from the U.S. Solicitor General’s Office. Its appellate practice today includes more than 45 lawyers who have argued more than 250 cases before the SCOTUS, representing either parties or amici in approximately 15 cases each term for the past several years and arguing, on average, four per term. Unsurprisingly, the firm ranks among the top 25 in Vault’s Appellate Litigation ranking.

Of course, you can’t discuss Mayer Brown without mentioning its corporate practice, which is core to the firm’s transactional work, and the firm’s interconnected regulatory, enforcement, high-stakes litigation, and policy practices, which serve industries from insurance to infrastructure. But Mayer Brown’s signature strength is the global financial services industry, with the firm having more than 300 lawyers across the globe counseling clients on asset finance, derivatives, structured finance, and more.

Put Me In Coach

While Mayer Brown is big on learning by doing, the firm offers its attorneys various coaching opportunities to support them in their careers. The firm provides both individual and group coaching on career planning, communication, leave transitions, mentor relationships, and time management.

• One of Mayer Brown’s signature strengths is the sophisticated advice it gives the global financial services industry. For instance, the firm helped create some of the most significant securitization products used in the capital markets today, such as the Mortgage Partnership Finance Program for the Federal Home Loan Banks.
• In disputes, Mayer Brown has also made its mark. For example, it pioneered the use of arbitration to avoid inefficient consumer class actions in AT&T v. Concepcion. More recently, the firm helped Citibank recover $500 million in mistakenly wired funds in a multi-year case.
• On a pro bono basis, the firm obtained a landmark settlement for the US Women’s National Soccer Team players in their equal-pay lawsuit against the US Soccer Federation, the first such commitment from a major US sports federation. Beginning in 2021, the firm spearheaded a coalition to evacuate nearly 150 Asian University for Women students in Afghanistan, placing them at US universities, and in 2024, secured asylum for them, ensuring their continued education and indefinite stay in the US.

• Mansfield Rule Certified in the US and UK, 2022-2023—Diversity Lab
• Diversity Scorecard Top Law Firm, 2023—The American Lawyer
• Pro Bono Innovator, 2022—Bloomberg Law
• Innovative Lawyers Asia Pacific, Europe, and North America, 2023—Financial Times
• “Distinguished” Litigation Firm, 2023—BTI’s Litigation Outlook 2024