2024 DIVERSITY DATABASE PREMIUM SPONSOR Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP

Morgan Lewis has branched out from its Philadelphia roots to build a global network of lawyers in more than 30 offices, reaching from Boston to Singapore and from San Francisco to Dubai. The firm’s strengths include litigation, labor and employment, corporate, finance, employee benefits, intellectual property (IP), energy, investment management, structured transactions, and a variety of regulatory areas.

Philly Roots, Global Presence

Morgan Lewis was founded in Philadelphia in 1873 by Charles Eldridge Morgan, Jr., a Civil War veteran, and Francis Draper Lewis, a cotton merchant’s son. Ten years later, Morris Rex Bockius joined, becoming a driving force behind the firm for nearly four decades. In the early 1880s, the firm’s fortunes soared when it acquired United Gas Improvement Company as a client; the company eventually grew into the largest gas and electricity operation in the United States and remains a Morgan Lewis client to this day. Morgan Lewis brought key newspapers, railroads, paper companies, rail companies, and financial institutions into the fold in the ensuing decades. The firm has expanded beyond its historical East Coast clients and now represents nearly 90% of Fortune 100 companies while maintaining relationships with its long-term clients.

From Labor to Energy

Practicing across the aerospace and defense, automotive and mobility, aviation, banking, energy, fintech, healthcare, insurance, investment funds, life sciences, retail and ecommerce, sports, and technology sectors, Morgan Lewis has an expansive range of experience. The firm’s attorneys work across 15 practice groups on antitrust and competition; corporate and business transactions; crisis management; eData; employee benefits; energy and project development; FDA and healthcare; finance; IP; investment management; labor and employment; litigation; private client; pro bono; structured transactions; tax; and telecom, media, and technology.

Litigation is the firm’s largest practice, and the firm competes with its fellow V100 firms for corporate work. That said, Morgan Lewis is perhaps best known for its labor and employment work. Nearly 400 of the firm’s lawyers counsel clients on a range of employment and labor issues, from benefits, ERISA, and executive compensation to global employment matters and from labor relations and OSHA matters to wage and hour issues, whistleblowing, and many more. The firm is among the top five in Vault’s Labor & Employment rankings. And this practice group has its own X handle: @MLWORKFORCE.

The firm also boasts an impressive energy practice, which crosses borders and industries to deliver advice on complex issues to its clients. Morgan Lewis lawyers handle all facets of energy transactions—from development, financing, and acquisition to divestiture of resources—as well as regulatory issues regarding energy. The firm has experience handling matters related to oil and gas, electric, nuclear, and renewable energy.

Big Impact

Morgan Lewis contributed over 120,000 pro bono hours to more than 2,300 pro bono clients in FY 2024. Every lawyer in the firm recorded at least 20 hours on pro bono matters, with approximately 66 average hours per attorney. In addition to year-round pro bono and community service initiatives, all 32 Morgan Lewis offices collaborate on an annual Community Impact Week, a global firm initiative comprising 175 community service- and pro bono-related programs. More than 1,500 lawyers and staff members participate in the program. The firm has five full-time lawyers running the program, including a partner who focuses exclusively on impact litigation and serves as the firm’s first senior pro bono trial lawyer.

• Morgan Lewis served as lead counsel to the United States Soccer Federation in collective bargaining negotiations that culminated with first-of-their-kind equal pay agreements between the federation and players associations representing its women’s and men’s national teams.

• Morgan Lewis represented Hostess Brands in its acquisition by The J.M. Smucker Co. in a cash and stock transaction valued at $34.25 per Hostess Brands share, representing a transaction value of approximately $5.6 billion.

• Morgan Lewis represented the Alfred E. Mann Foundation in obtaining a $268 million verdict in a patent infringement action against Cochlear. This judgment reinstated a $134 million jury verdict from 2014 and then doubled the damages for willful infringement, ranking it among the largest patent damages awards in 2018.

• Morgan Lewis successfully litigated a class action on behalf of veterans from the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan who were discharged from the military services due to severe PTSD and then denied the significant retirement benefits to which they were entitled under the law, including health care. As a result of this lawsuit, the US military agreed to pay lifetime disability retirement benefits to 1,029 class members as well as provide lifetime healthcare and other benefits for the vets and their families.

• Top 10 Am Law 100, 2025—The American Lawyer
• A-List Law Firm, 2018-2024—The American Lawyer
• Most Prestigious Firms, 2014-2024—Vault Guide to Top 100 Law Firms
• Top 35 Most Innovative Law Firms in North America, 2024—Financial Times
• #1, Breadth of Commitment, Pro Bono Scorecard, 2024—The American Lawyer