| Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP | |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California |
| No. of offices | 23 |
| No. of attorneys | 1,100+ |
| Major practice areas | General practice |
| Key people | Ralph Baxter (Chairman & Managing Partner) |
| Date founded | 1863 |
| Company type | Limited liability partnership |
| Website | |
| www.orrick.com | |
Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP is an international law firm founded in San Francisco. Orrick traces its roots back to 1863, making it the oldest continuously-operating law firm in San Francisco, and the second-oldest privately-held company in San Francisco after Levi Strauss & Co.. Orrick is currently headed by Chairman Ralph Baxter, an employment lawyer originally from West Virginia.
The firm has over 1,100 lawyers worldwide in 21 offices, with more than 200 attorneys in each of its two largest offices in San Francisco and New York. The firm's day-to-day administrative operations are centralized at a Global Operations Center in Wheeling, West Virginia.
The firm is particularly known for its securities litigation, public finance, tax, energy regulation, emerging companies, real estate, bankruptcy, compensation and benefits, white collar crime, intellectual property, commercial litigation, and transactional practices.
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Orrick traces its roots to the year 1863, when the German Savings and Loan Society (which later became part of the First Interstate Bank of California) was organized, with John R. Jarboe as its general counsel. In 1885, Jarboe, along with colleagues Ralph J. Harrison and W.S. Goodfellow, founded the law firm Jarboe, Harrison & Goodfellow.
Jarboe, Harrison & Goodfellow dissolved in 1891 when Harrison was appointed justice to the California Supreme Court. In 1901, Goodfellow formed a new partnership with Charles Eells, creating the firm Goodfellow & Eells. William Horsley Orrick joined the firm in 1910, and after Stanley Moore joined the firm in 1914, the firm's name changed to Goodfellow, Eells, Moore & Orrick.
In 1927, Ralph Palmer, Tom Dahlquist, George Herrington, and Mitchell Neff became partners, and Eric Sutcliffe joined in 1932. During the 1930s the firm played a major role in helping to finance the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge. It not only helped structure the bridge's financing, but also defended the bonds' validity when challenged by interests opposed to the bridge's construction.
Sutcliffe replaced Orrick as the firm's managing partner in 1947, a position he held for more than 30 years. In 1980, the firm's name was changed to Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe.
Orrick is one few California firms to have reached critical mass of over 200 attorneys in New York. Its East Coast ambitions were assisted when it acquired 40 lawyers and their litigation practices from Donovan, Leisure, Newton & Irvine in 1998, a move that led to the breakup of that firm.
The firm expanded internationally in 2005 at the expense of the now-defunct law firm Coudert Brothers. Orrick doubled its London office with the addition of the Coudert team and opened offices in Moscow, Beijing and Shanghai with Coudert Brothers professionals. Orrick also acquired the Hong Kong office of Coudert Brothers. In 2006, the firm engaged in protracted merger negotiations with legacy Wall Street firm Dewey Ballantine. The merger was unsuccessful and Dewey later combined in 2008 with fellow New York firm LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene & MacRae to form Dewey & LeBoeuf. Since 2008, Orrick has expanded through merging with 50-lawyer Düsseldorf-based law firm Hölters & Elsing (Partnerschaft von Rechtsanwälten), which gave the firm offices in Berlin, Düsseldorf and Frankfurt am Main, in one of Europe's largest economies, in which Orrick had lacked a presence. Orrick also recently welcomed a group of project finance attorneys in its San Francisco office from Thelen LLP and in its Paris office from Curtis, Mallet-Prevost, Colt & Mosle. In 2008, the firm admitted almost two dozen partners in its London, New York, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C., offices from the San Francisco firm Heller Ehrman, including 27 hired[1] after Heller's Sept. 26, 2008, announcement of dissolution.
On Nov. 13, 2008, citing the severity of the global economic downturn, Orrick laid off 40 associates and 35 staffers in various offices, predominately in the United States, and said that because of the economy and the firm's recent capital investments, profits per partner would be down this year. In recent years, Orrick has outperformed other San Francisco-based firms in growth and profitability.[2] The firm's 2008 financial data was reported in January 2009: Gross revenue was reported up 8 percent, half the growth seen the year before, while profits per equity partner fell 21 percent. Citing the economic downturn, Baxter called the numbers "disappointing but not surprising," and said the firm would continue to be growth-oriented.[3]
In March 2009, Orrick laid off an additional 100 attorneys and 200 staff, citing again the recession that began in December 2007 as the reason.
In September 2010, Orrick announced it had entered preliminary merger talks with Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld[4] But just six days later, the two firms announced the talks had been aborted, making the proposed union the latest in a series of failed merger attempts by Orrick, including dalliances with Coudert Brothers, Cooley, Venture Law Group, Swidler Berlin Shereff Friedman, Dewey Ballantine and SJ Berwin.[5]
Orrick attorneys donate their time and resources to numerous pro-bono projects, earning them the 2008 ABA Business Law National Public Service Award. [10] Partering with legal services organizations around the country, including Bet Tzedek, Bay Area Legal Aid, and the Legal Aid Society of Orange County, Orrick helps represent numerous low-income clients to increase the accessibility of the Justice system. [11]