Sidley Austin LLP

Sidley Austin is a global powerhouse with a long list of clients from Fortune 500 companies to startups in a range of industries, including energy, financial services, healthcare, insurance, life sciences, sports and media, and technology. With over 2,300 lawyers across 21 offices who collaborate across disciplines and borders, Sidley helps clients in more than 70 countries with cross-border transactions, investigations, restructurings, crisis management, litigation, and regulatory matters.

Chicago and New York Powers Unite

Sidley traces its history back to the 1860s in Chicago and has represented marquee clients from the start, including former first lady Mary Todd Lincoln, George Pullman, and the Western Union Telegraph Company (later AT&T). The Chicago-based firm merged in 2001 with a top Wall Street-founded law firm, creating the Sidley Austin LLP that clients today look to for counsel. 

Elite Platform, Cross-Border Capabilities

Among the firm’s top practices are M&A and private equity, litigation, restructuring, life sciences, energy, environmental law, capital markets, Supreme Court and appellate, securities enforcement and regulatory, and white collar and government investigations, all of which the firm handles for clients worldwide. Sidley’s 750 litigators deploy innovative legal strategies at each stage of litigation, representing clients nearly anywhere they find themselves facing a dispute. In the 2025 edition of Global Investigations Review’s GIR 100, the firm ranked among the top three law firms in the world for cross-border corporate investigations.

Sidley handles private equity, M&A, and broader corporate matters across major international markets. Clients include public and private companies, private equity funds and other financial sponsors, boards of directors, special committees, and financial advisers. Since 2022, Sidley handled over 1,975 private equity/M&A transactions worth more than $1.2 trillion in deal value, earning two Law360 Practice Group of the Year awards (2022 and 2025) and continued recognition in global M&A league tables, as well as No. 1 rankings for company representations in all the major activism league tables, including Bloomberg, FactSet, LSEG, and Diligent.

The firm’s Supreme Court and appellate practice has secured victories in each of the 13 courts of appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court in the past two years. Sidley lawyers have briefed over 250 Supreme Court cases on the merits, argued over 190 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, and had a hand in over 450 cases in federal appellate courts. The firm needs four hands to count how many times it has been named to The National Law Journal’s Appellate Hot List and is regularly ranked in Vault’s Appellate rankings.

Clients also turn to the firm to navigate the regulatory, policy, and compliance challenges that arise in conducting business across borders. The firm’s cross-border team is well-versed in local laws across jurisdictions and includes over 100 lawyers who were former officials at key regulatory agencies around the globe. The firm was highly ranked by Chambers Global in 2026 for international and cross-border work in corporate/M&A, disputes, energy, investigations and enforcement, finance and capital markets, insurance, investment funds and asset management, life sciences and pharmaceuticals, restructuring, and technology.

Impacting the World

Through its robust pro bono program, Sidley lawyers work on matters involving veterans advocacy, constitutional rights and civil liberties, and asylum and immigration. The firm has also tackled pressing cases before the Supreme Court and defended the rights of prisoners on death row. As part of its social responsibility program, the firm provides charitable donations to various organizations, and lawyers and business professionals at the firm log many hours of volunteer work, expanding its efforts to contribute to local communities each year.

• Sidley represented Affinity Partners in a landmark $55 billion consortium acquisition of Electronic Arts, one of the largest tech deals of the year.
• Sidley advised the State of Kansas in its successful negotiations to relocate the Kansas City Chiefs from Missouri to Kansas. The project includes a new headquarters and practice facility, a new NFL stadium to the State of Kansas, and additional mixed-use ancillary development in excess of $1 billion for a total project cost of approximately $4.5 billion. The firm is also representing the Chicago Bears on a similar project that would include a new NFL stadium and ancillary development.
• Won a unanimous SCOTUS victory on behalf of a former Marine and a class of more than 9,000 veterans, securing a ruling that those with combat-related disabilities are entitled to receive combat-related special compensation benefits for all months they are eligible—regardless of when they applied for benefits.
• Sidley secured dismissal of a high-profile defamation lawsuit against Universal Music Group brought by Drake.

• One of The Best Companies for Future Leaders in the United States, the only law firm to be featured, 2026—TIME
• Best Law Firm of the Year Finalist, The American Lawyer Industry Awards, 2025—Law.com
• Law Firm of the Year in Derivatives and Futures Law and Private Funds/Hedge Funds, based on the Best Law Firms Survey, 2026—Best Lawyers
• Practice Group of the Year in Compliance, Cybersecurity & Privacy, Environmental, and Private Equity, 2025—Law360
• Named a Pro Bono Innovator, 2025—Bloomberg