| Dechert LLP | |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | Philadelphia, Pennsylvania |
| No. of offices | 21 total (9 international) |
| No. of attorneys | over 800 (2011) |
| Major practice areas | General practice |
| Key people | CEO Daniel O'Donnell, Chairman Andrew J. Levander |
| Date founded | 1875 |
| Founder | Wayne MacVeagh and George Tucker Bispham |
| Company type | Limited liability partnership |
| Slogan | Definitive advice, practical guidance, powerful advocacy |
| Website | |
| dechert.com | |
Dechert LLP is an international law firm of more than 800 lawyers with top-ranked practices in corporate and securities, complex litigation, finance and real estate, and financial services and asset management. Dechert has offices throughout the United States, Asia and Europe. It was founded in Philadelphia and is registered as a limited liability partnership under Pennsylvania law.
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The firm's first predecessor was formed in 1875 by Wayne MacVeagh and George Tucker Bispham. MacVeagh had previously served as United States Ambassador to Turkey, and went on to become United States Attorney General under President James Garfield and also United States Ambassador to Italy during the 1890s. Bispham was made a professor at University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1884. Another future U.S. Attorney General, Francis Biddle, also a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, joined the firm in 1916. In its early years, the firm represented a number of banks, railroads, and coal companies.[1]
During World War II, the firm lost many of its attorneys to the war effort, and combined with another Philadelphia-based law firm, Dechert, Smith & Clark, which had been founded in 1930. The firm began creating specialized practice groups shortly after the war.[1] After a series of name changes in the early 1960s, the firm decided not to change its name whenever its most senior partners retired or died; it remained Dechert, Price & Rhoads for several decades thereafter.
During the 1980s, Dechert represented Getty Oil Company in its acquisition by Texaco. This is the deal that led to the notorious Pennzoil v. Texaco case, which resulted in a Texas state court verdict for Pennzoil for $10.53 billion, forcing Texaco to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.[1]
Dechert opened its first European office in Brussels in 1968. Four years later, Dechert opened a London office. The firm established a presence in Paris in 1995 and undertook a major expansion in the United Kingdom through a merger with Titmuss Sainer Dechert, a leading London law firm, in 2000. Since then, Dechert has opened offices in Luxembourg (2001), Munich (2004), Hong Kong (2007), Beijing (2008), Moscow (2009), Dublin (2010) and Los Angeles (2011).
The firm's core practices are corporate and securities, with an emphasis on mergers and acquisitions, private equity, and corporate finance; litigation, emphasizing antitrust, product liability, and white collar and securities defense; finance and real estate, with a focus on mortgage finance, structured finance, securitization, and investment; financial services, focusing on mutual funds, hedge funds, variable products, broker-dealer, commodities, derivatives, and investment advisers; and intellectual property, emphasizing patent litigation and IP prosecution and licensing.
The firm also has well-established practices in tax, bankruptcy, employment, health and environmental law.
Its product liability litigation group has represented Philip Morris in class action suits and represented Merck & Co. in suits regarding the drugs Vioxx and Vytorin.
Attorneys from Dechert prepared the habeas corpus petition for Omar Deghayes, one of the captives held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba.[2][3] Attorneys from Dechert traveled to Afghanistan to check out the captives' alibis. Peter Ryan represented Nasrat Khan, a grandfather, who had a stroke in 1988, and was confined to a walker, was one of his clients.[4]
Charles "Cully" Stimson, then Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs, stirred controversy when he went on record criticizing the patriotism of law firms that allowed employees to assist Guantanamo captives: "corporate CEOs seeing this should ask firms to choose between lucrative retainers and representing terrorists."[5] Stimson's views were widely criticized. The Pentagon disavowed them, and he resigned shortly thereafter.
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