2024 DIVERSITY DATABASE UNDERWRITER O'Melveny & Myers LLP

Long residing in California—where it maintains a quintet of offices—O’Melveny & Myers has more than 850 attorneys in 17 offices worldwide. O'Melveny's award-winning litigation team is renowned for reducing clients’ exposure and risk by disposing of cases early or, when necessary, by developing inventive trial strategies that lead to groundbreaking results. O'melveny also excels at conducting sensitive government and internal investigations, which makes an impression in boardrooms as well as courtrooms. The firm’s premier corporate team has an established record of completing landmark deals from record-setting acquisitions and offerings to high-profile Chapter 11 proceedings.

Growing with LA

The O’Melveny story starts in 1885 when Henry W. O’Melveny and Jackson Graves founded a partnership in Los Angeles. The fledgling firm gained traction through its work on land litigation surrounding the ownership of California’s Spanish haciendas and its handling of the legalities of hydroelectric power, which helped to transform the arid basin of Los Angeles into a sprawling, car-centric metropolis. The firm underwent a total of nine name changes, and after California Supreme Court Chief Justice Louis W. Myers was hired as a lateral partner, it became O’Melveny & Myers in 1939.

Shooting for the Stars

O’Melveny is known as a go-to firm for the toughest cases. The firm’s multidisciplinary platform is calibrated to the industries shaping the global economy, including AI, consumer products, energy, entertainment, financial services, healthcare, infrastructure, life sciences, semiconductors, software, sports, and transportation.

Coming in at No. 4 in Vault’s Media, Entertainment, & Sports rankings, the firm is known for its work in the entertainment and sports fields. The firm’s experience includes complex media and entertainment transactions; high-profile entertainment, media, and sports disputes; stadium development; complex licensing agreements; and sponsorships. Among the firm’s clients are Disney, Hulu, NBCUniversal, Paramount Global, Warner Bros. Discovery, Legendary Entertainment, Netflix, and ByteDance.

The firm’s litigators work on disputes that seek damages in the billions, challenge the business practices of entire industries, and stand to set new legal precedent. O’Melveny’s litigation roster runs the gamut—from antitrust, appellate, intellectual property, product liability, securities, and white collar to water, natural resources, and environmental law, among other matters.

Across the deal landscape, O’Melveny’s corporate groups are routinely tapped for headline-making transactions, serving as sounding boards, creative problem solvers, and thought partners for industry leaders. The firm routinely advises on billion-dollar financing deals, global M&A transactions, and infrastructure projects. “Unicorns”—private companies valued higher than a billion dollars—and venture-backed companies looking to sell or go public turn to the firm’s cross-disciplinary emerging companies group.

William T. Coleman, Jr. Fellowships

William T. Coleman, Jr., a longtime senior partner and an indelible part of O’Melveny’s fabric, served the legal profession and his country for more than 50 years. A tireless advocate for equality and a key player on the team that litigated the landmark Supreme Court civil rights case Brown v. Board of Education, Coleman urged junior lawyers to cultivate their cultural literacy and pay close attention to events unfolding on the world stage. To honor that vision and spirit, O’Melveny created the William T. Coleman, Jr. 1L and 2L Fellowships.

• Counseled Alaska Airlines on its $1.9 billion acquisition of Hawaiian Airlines.
• Counseled enterprise AI startup Moveworks on its $2.85 billion acquisition by ServiceNow, a cloud-based IT support platform.
• Secured a case-ending victory in an AI-related patent case on behalf of client LG Electronics against Image Processing Technologies.
• Counseled luxury apparel maker Guess?, Inc., on its $1.4 billion take-private transaction.

• 14 consecutive years on the A-List, 2025—The American Lawyer
• No. 1 in the Midlevel Associates Survey, 2025—The American Lawyer
• Named to the Prestige Leaders List, 2025—Law360
• No. 6 nationally on the Pro Bono Scorecard: Average Hours and Breadth of Commitment, 2025—The American Lawyer