Debevoise & Plimpton

Debevoise & Plimpton

Headquarters	919 Third Avenue New York City United States
No. of offices	8 Total
No. of attorneys	644 (2011)
Major practice areas	Mergers and acquisitions, litigation and arbitration, corporate finance, corporate restructuring, securities law, banking, project finance, energy and infrastructure, antitrust, tax and intellectual property, among others[1]
Key people	Michael W. Blair Presiding Partner
Revenue	$688.2 million (2013)[2]
Date founded	1931
Company type	L.L.P.
Website
www.debevoise.com

Debevoise & Plimpton LLP (often shortened to Debevoise), founded in 1931, is an international law firm based in New York City.

Founded in 1931 by Harvard alumnus Eli Whitney Debevoise and Oxford-trained William Stevenson, Debevoise has been a long established leader in strategic and private equity, M&A, insurance and financial services transactions, private funds, complex litigation/investigations and international arbitration. In recent years, its practice has taken on an increasingly international component. The firm currently employs approximately 650 lawyers in eight offices throughout the world. Debevoise is the only law firm to have both a former US and UK Attorney General simultaneously as partners (Michael Mukasey in the US and Lord Goldsmith QC in the UK).^[3]

Debevoise placed No. 1 overall in The American Lawyer's "10-Year A-List," a ranking of the law firms who have earned the highest cumulative score on the A-List since its inception in 2003. The annual A-List ranks firms according to their performance in four categories: revenue per lawyer, pro bono service, associate satisfaction and diversity.^[4] The firm has been regarded in branche-internal polls as one of the most prestigious firms to work for (in New York^[5] and globally^[6]), and ranks among the most elite^[7] and successful firms globally.^[8]The firm culture at Debevoise is often hailed as one of the most collegial in the country. Chambers Associate described Debevoise as very much the "Gentleman of the world of Big Law".^[3]

Reputation and Rankings

Debevoise & Plimpton is consistently among the most profitable large law firms in the world on a per-partner and per-lawyer basis according to the American Lawyer’s annual AmLaw 100 Survey. The firm and its lawyers have also been recognized in various other surveys, including Vault.com’s 2011 review of the 20 Best Law Firms to Work For.

• ALM's The American Lawyer named Debevoise & Plimpton as 2014 Litigation Department of the Year. As profiled in the January issue and online at www.americanlawyer.com, “the Debevoise litigators are like the Army Rangers—a small but elite group that works seamlessly and handles the most challenging cases,” racking up two $25 billion results, two major trial defense wins worth $3.5 billion each, and the largest investor-state award in arbitration history during the August 2011 to July 2013 period on which firms were evaluated.^[9]
• Four of Debevoise's practice groups were recognized by Law360 as "Practice Groups of the Year" (2015).
• Debevoise was named one of best places to work for LGBT equality by Human Rights Campaign (2015).
• Debevoise was ranked third in the 2015 A-List. In 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007, Debevoise & Plimpton was named as America's Best Law Firm by the American Lawyer in its A-List rankings.
• For 2015, Debevoise & Plimpton was ranked #16 on The Vault’s Top 100 Most Prestigious Law Firm Rankings.
• Ranked as a leading firm in multiple ratings categories by the Avery Index.

More information about the firm's recent representations, announcements and accolades may be found here.

Other Mentions

In the 2000s, Debevoise & Plimpton was mentioned several times on the TV show The West Wing. In the show, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Josh Lyman's father was a partner at Debevoise. Additionally, an assistant attorney general in the show was a summer associate at Debevoise and a prospective White House counsel candidate was interviewing for a position as an associate at Debevoise.

Controversial Georgian businessman, Badri Patarkatsishvili spent six hours of his final day at the offices of Debevoise & Plimpton, meeting his lawyer Lord Goldsmith QC, shortly before being driven to Boris Berezovsky's office in Mayfair and then to his country mansion in Leatherhead, Surrey where he collapsed and died of a heart attack at the age of 52.

Selected Transactions - 2015

• Activision Blizzard in its $5.9 billion acquisition of King Digital Entertainment.
• Anbang Insurance Group in its $1.57 billion acquisition of Fidelity & Guaranty Life.
• Canada Pension Plan Investment Board in its $12 billion acquisition of GE Capital’s sponsor lending business, including Antares Capital, the leading lender to middle market private equity sponsors in the U.S.
• The Dolan family, controlling stockholders of Cablevision Systems Corporation, in Cablevision’s $17.7 billion sale to Altice.
• Evercore Group as financial advisor to EMC Corporation in its $67 billion sale to Dell, and as financial advisor to DuPont in its $130 billion merger with The Dow Chemical Company.
• Exor S.p.A. as insurance M&A counsel in its contested $6.9 billion acquisition of PartnerRe, a Bermuda-based reinsurance company.
• Guggenheim Securities and Goldman Sachs as financial advisors to Pfizer in its $160 billion acquisition of Allergan.
• Hussmann, a Clayton, Dubilier & Rice portfolio company, in its $1.5 billion sale to Panasonic.
• Lannett in its acquisition for $1.23 billion in cash, plus additional contingent consideration, of Kremers Urban Pharmaceuticals, the U.S. specialty generic pharmaceuticals subsidiary of global biopharmaceuticals company UCB.
• P2 Capital, with Goldman Sachs Capital Partners, in its $1.6 billion sale of Interline Brands to Home Depot.
• PharMEDium, a Clayton, Dubilier & Rice portfolio company and the leading national provider of outsourced compounded sterile preparations to acute care hospitals in the United States, in its $2.6 billion sale to AmerisourceBergen.
• StanCorp Financial Group in its $5 billion sale to Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance Company.
• Westfield Corporation in its $1.1 billion divestiture of five shopping centers in the United States to an investor group led by Centennial Real Estate Company of Dallas, TX.

Assistance to Guantanamo Prisoners

Attorneys from Debevoise & Plimpton worked on behalf of prisoners held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba.^[10][11][12] Jeff Lang, of Debevoise & Plimpton, was one of the first Guantanamo Bay attorneys to file an appeal in the Federal appeal court in Washington DC of prisoners' Combatant Status Review Tribunal proceedings. The Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 included provision for prisoners to challenge whether the Tribunals' decisions complied with the Tribunal's mandate.

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 prisoners: "corporate CEOs seeing this should ask firms to choose between lucrative retainers and representing terrorists." ^[13] Stimson's views were widely criticized. The Pentagon disavowed them and Stimson resigned shortly thereafter.

Defending Take-Two

Debevoise & Plimpton has the lead role defending Take-Two Interactive Software against a lawsuit filed by actress Lindsay Lohan. In the lawsuit Lohan claims that Take-Two Interactive Software is in breach of her image rights after it based a character in Grand Theft Auto V without her consent. Claiming unspecified damages on privacy grounds, citing an "unequivocal" similarity between herself and the game's character "Lacey Jonas", alleging that her voice and items from her clothing label were lifted by the Take-Two Interactive.^[14]

In response Take-Two Interactive has accused Lohan of suing in order to gain publicity, and characterizes her claim as "legally meritless."^[14]

See also

• White shoe firms
• The Magic Circle
• Francis T.P. Plimpton
• Mary Jo White
• Peter Goldsmith, Baron Goldsmith, former Attorney General for England and Wales and Northern Ireland, and current head of European litigation practice at Debevoise & Plimpton.
• Michael Mukasey
• Edward Cochrane McLean
• Louis Begley
• Allison Christians

References

External links

• Official Firm Website
• Debevoise & Plimpton Marks 75th Anniversary