Baker & McKenzie (world rank # 4)

Friday, November 6, 2009


Baker & McKenzie

Baker & McKenzie

TypePrivate
Founded1949
HeadquartersChicago, Illinois
Key peopleJohn Conroy Jr.(Chairman of the Executive Committee)
IndustryLegal
Revenue▲ US$ 2.11 billion (2008)
Employees10,000

is an international law firm, founded in Chicago in 1949 by Russell Baker and John McKenzie. One of the first law firms to be truly global,[1] it is now home to more than 3,900 lawyers spread over more than 70 offices in 38 different countries.[2]
As a transnational operation, no single nationality dominates the firm, and more than 80 percent of its lawyers practice outside the United States. The lawyers come from 60 countries and speak more than 75 languages, with English in common. It offers more lawyers in the world’s leading financial centers (New York, London, Tokyo and Hong Kong) than any other firm, as of 2007.[3]
Baker & McKenzie is the second largest law firm in the world by number of attorneys,[4], and as of 2008, it is the second largest law firm in the world by revenue.[5] Among US firms, it is ranked the second largest by number of attorneys[6] and the sixth largest by revenue.[7] It is also the largest international law firm in Asia, with 14 offices and in Latin America, with 16 offices.[8]

History

[edit]Chicago Origins

Baker & McKenzie was founded in 1949 but it has its origins in Russell Baker's practice opened in 1925 upon his graduation from the University of Chicago School of Law. Russell Baker, though born in Wisconsin, was raised in New Mexico. From an early age he was exposed to the Spanish language and other cultures. The early firm, Baker & Simpson provided legal services to Chicago's growing Mexican Americancommunity. The firm soon positioned itself to advise US companies investing in Latin America. Abbott Laboratories became a chief client in 1934 as it expanded overseas. In 1949, the firm relaunched with John McKenzie, an experienced litigator who had graduated from Loyola University Chicago School of Law. McKenzie took charge of the flourishing litigation practice, and Baker was able to devote his energies to building an international practice for himself and his firm. Through the 1950s, the firm's client roster expanded to include Eli Lilly (still a valued client today), G. D. Searle & Company, Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company and Honeywell

[edit]Early expansion and the Baker & McKenzie model

The firm became an international firm after 1955 when a lawyer in Venezuela contacted Baker & McKenzie about opening a joint venture office in Caracas. Donald Baker, the name partner's son, soon moved to Caracas to launch a practice for the firm. In the next three years, flags were planted in Washington, D.C., Brussels, Zurich, New York and São Paulo. Unlike fellow American firms that often practiced US law abroad, Baker & McKenzie made a decision to train local lawyers, often bringing them to the Chicago base for an initial period or temporarily relocating US attorneys to the foreign office to oversee the establishment of the practice. By 1978 Baker & McKenzie had 26 offices in 20 countries.

[edit]Consolidation and further expansion

The firm's management made a series of predictions that yielded greater profits and more legal mandates. In 1986, the firm established offices in Northern Mexico to facilitate legal transactions connected to industrial development in that region. Baker & McKenzie was one of the first firms to go East and open offices after the Iron Curtain fell. To achieve critical mass in California, the firm merged with MacDonald, Halsted, and Laybourne to start offices in Los Angeles and San Diego. Further growth resulted such that the firm operated some 49 offices on 6 continents by 1990, employing some 1500 attorneys generating $404 million in revenues.

[edit]Baker & McKenzie today

The firm celebrated its 50th anniversary in 1999. That same year, Christine Lagarde, a French antitrust and labor lawyer, became head of the Executive Committee of the firm. Two years later another important milestone is reached when the firm now employs 3000 attorneys and $2 billion in revenues. Baker & McKenzie adopted a Swiss Verein structure on July 1, 2004. In 2005, the firm received a large boost when some 70 partners and other legal staff from the New York office of the disbanding international firm Coudert Brothers joined Baker & McKenzie.

[edit]Notable cases tried

Baker & McKenzie LLP acted as U.S. counsel for the Gas Natural Group in a US$1.448bn energy acquisition, the largest mergers and acquisitions deal in Mexico in 2007. The transaction represented the entry of the Spanish energy multinational into the Mexican electricity generation business as the second largest private operator, making Gas Natural the only operator of both gas and electricity in Mexico.[9]
Baker & McKenzie advised American Standard on the US$1.745bn sale of its bath and kitchen products business and the wider separation of the company’s operations. Completion of the deal involved 600 of the firm’s lawyers spread over 40 offices.[10]
In October 2007, Baker & McKenzie advised 'Nike on its £284m takeover bid for UK sportswear maker Umbro.[11]
In 2006, Baker & McKenzie wrote the amicus brief of the Council of Parent Attorneys & Advocates (COPAA) in support of the petition for a writ of certiorari in Winkelman v. Parma City School District, and later, COPAA's amicus brief on the merits.[12] It argued that parents have the right to represent themselves in court to enforce their IDEA rights and protect their children's access to a free appropriate public education. This led to a unanimous Supreme Court decision in June 2007 granting parents the right to proceed without counsel on behalf of children with disabilities.[13]
In January 2007, Baker & McKenzie represented L'Oreal on appeal of its trademark infringement case against rival cosmetic company Special Effects. The Court of Appeal overturned a High Court decision that had discouraged IP owners to oppose UK trade mark applications. The appeal was important enough to compel the International Trademark Association (INTA) to intervene.[14]
Baker & McKenzie represented five leading luxury goods and fashion brands in an action against the landlord of the infamous Silk MarketShopping mall where counterfeit goods were sold.[15] The Intermediate and Higher People’s Courts both confirmed that the landlord was jointly and severally liable for failing to stop infringements by vendors after being notified of them, making this the first time a landlord is held responsible for the illegal activities of their tenants in the judicial history of China. This case was also recognized as a “Top Ten” case by the Beijing Higher People’s Court.[16]
Other notable clients include Unilever, Hewlett-Packard, Sony Corporation, Cisco Systems, L'Oreal, Nike, Accenture and British Airways.[17]

[edit]Awards

The Australian arm of Baker & McKenzie was named in 2008 as the eighth fastest growing firm in Australia-NZ in ALB magazine's annual Fast 10 survey[18]. They were also recognised at the ALB Law Awards as being the CSR Firm of the Year[18]. At the 2008 ALB SE Asia Law Awards, Baker & McKenzie was crowned Deal of the Year - Thailand Deal Firm of the Year.
In 2008, Baker & McKenzie was awarded at the 2008 ALB Hong Kong Law Awards[19] as the:
  • Firm of the Year - Intellectual Property Law Firm of the Year
  • Firm of the Year - Tax & Trusts Law Firm of the Year
The Foreign Policy Association[20] gave its 2008 Corporate Social Responsibility Award to Baker & McKenzie, the first law firm to receive such an award.[21]
Baker & McKenzie ranked No. 3 in the 2008 BTI Client Service 30, a list of 30 law firms that deliver "superior" client service[22], which is published by the BTI Consulting Group.[23]. Results for the survey were taken from more than 200 interviews with corporate counsel and top executives from Fortune 1000 companies.[24]
Baker & McKenzie is ranked among America's best corporate law firms, according to a survey of directors and general counsels of publicly traded companies conducted by Corporate Board Member magazine and FTI Consulting, a global business advisory firm.[25]
In September 2006, Baker & McKenzie won the International Law Office (ILO) Client Choice International Law Firm Award. It has also been recognized as the best law firm in China since 2005. The ILO Client Choice Awards are based on a survey of senior corporate counsels from 34 jurisdictions worldwide.[26]
Baker & McKenzie were awarded the 2004 DTI Worldaware Award for helping to build capacity in the third world.[27]
Some other of the most notable awards received by Baker & McKenzie include:[28]
  • No. 1 in PLC Which Lawyer?’s Global 50 each of the past five years;
  • Best Firm in Asia Pacific in PLC Which Lawyer? for four years running;
  • Runner-up in PLC Which Lawyer? for Best Latin America Firm in 2007;
  • International Financial Law Review (IFLR), Indonesian Law Firm of the Year for seven years in a row;
  • Asialaw’s Top Local Law Firms in Asia Pacific: China, Indonesia and Malaysia;
  • One of America’s 15 most-admired corporate law firms in Corporate Board Member survey; and,
  • Most leading lawyers (217) in the most countries (38) in the 2008 Chambers Global Directory of the World’s Leading Lawyers among the Global 20.

[edit]Diversity

The firm was recognized in 2008[29] for the second year in a row by Working Mother magazine as one of the Best Law Firms for Women.[30]
Baker & McKenzie is among the law firms in the US recognized by MultiCultural Law Magazine as one of its "Top 100 Law Firms for Diversity."[31]
Since 2005, Baker & McKenzie has been one of seven law firms[32] who are members of 'Diversity Champions'[33], a 'good practices' program for blue-chip and major public sector employers. Diversity Champions is an effort of Stonewall[34], a UK-based lobbying group dedicated to the rights of lesbians, gay men and bisexuals.

[edit]Baker & McKenzie in the News

In early 2009, Baker & McKenzie opened an office in Abu Dhabi, its fourth office in the Middle East, having received a professional license from the Abu Dhabi Department of Planning & Economy. [35]
John Conroy was re-elected to a second term as Chairman of the firm in October 2007.[36] The firm’s profit per partner (PPP) broke US$1 million for the first time during his first term.[37]
In September 2007, BTI Consulting rated the firm as one of the world's top 10 transaction law firms in its recent survey on corporate transactions, which was reported by National Law Journal.[38]
In October 2006, Unilever chose the Firm to manage its global trademark portfolio, the largest in the world with over 160,000 registrations. It was the first time a multinational company outsourced its trademark management to a law firm on such a large scale.[39]
Baker & McKenzie is one of the first law firms to have adopted a functional outsourcing operation, which is now being emulated by other firms.[40] Its offshore operations in Manila, which include marketing, business research, and IT and computer maintenance support, was profiled in January 2006 by BusinessWeek magazine.[41]
In June 2005, a senior associate called Richard Phillips drew a considerable amount of media attention after it was revealed that the highly-paid lawyer had been making a determined effort to have a £4 dry cleaning bill paid by a secretary who had accidentally splashed tomato ketchup on his trousers. In an open email, the secretary explained that she had been slow in attending to the matter due to the recent death and funeral of her mother. Before long, the story had been widely circulated throughout the City of London and beyond.[42]
In 1999, then-Paris managing partner Christine Lagarde was elected Chairman of the Global Executive Committee, the first woman to lead Baker & McKenzie. She was Chairman for five years. In 2004, Forbes listed Lagarde as No. 76 in its list of “Most Powerful Women in the World.”, as she served as France's Minister of Trade in 2006, she reached No. 30. She now serves as France’s Minister of Finance.[43]
In 1994, in a seminal case, a legal secretary named Rena Weeks successfully sued the law firm for sexual harassment.[44] The trial court ordered the law firm to pay $3.5 million in punitive damages, making it one of the largest damage awards in history for this type of action. [45]On May 4, 1998, the California Court of Appeal for the First District upheld the trial court's judgment in full, and the Supreme Court of Californiadenied review.[46] A subsequent dispute among Weeks' victorious attorneys as to the division of fees among them (she had signed a contingent fee agreement for 40% of her recovery) did reach the Supreme Court of California in 2002; the court held that the later-associated co-counsel could not recover the full amount he sought because Weeks' attorneys had not obtained her consent to an agreement to split fees among co-counsel from different firms as required by California court rules.[47] Martin R. Greenstein, the partner whose actions resulted in Weeks' successful lawsuit, was given a public reproval by the State Bar of California on March 26, 1998, and for obvious reasons, is no longer with Baker & McKenzie (the Court of Appeal decision noted that he was terminated by the firm in August 1993).[48]
In 1986, Geoffrey Bowers, then a New York attorney, filed a complaint with the New York State Division of Human Rights in 1986, charging that he had been fired from his job at the Chicago-based Baker & McKenzie law firm after AIDS-related lesions appeared on his face. Two months after testifying at a hearing on the complaint, he died at age 33. The case was resolved in his favor in late December, when Baker & McKenzie was ordered to pay $500,000 to Bowers' estate. It was one of the first AIDS discrimination cases to go to a public hearing. Baker & McKenzie appealed but subsequently withdrew the appeal after they negotiated a confidential settlement with Bowers' family forbidding parties from ever discussing the case or the terms of the agreement in 1995. These events were the inspiration for the film Philadelphia, starring Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington. The film's credits include the following message: "This motion picture was inspired in part by Geoffrey Bowers’ AIDS discrimination lawsuit, the courage and love of the Angius family and the struggles of the many others who, along with their loved ones, have experienced discrimination because of AIDS."

Offices

Baker & McKenzie is organized as a Swiss Verein in which each office is a largely-autonomous component of a loose international organization.

[edit]North America

The firm's office at One Prudential Plaza.

[edit]Latin America

[edit]Europe

[edit]Middle East

[edit]Asia/Pacific


Contact Us

General Inquiries
Press and Media
Executive Management
  • Our Leadership

    International Executive Offices
    One Prudential Plaza, Suite 2500
    Chicago, Illinois 60601, USA
    T    el: +1 312 861 8800
    Fax: +1 312 861 8823


Posted by talat yasmeen at 8:34 PM  

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