Squire Patton Boggs

Squire Patton Boggs

Headquarters	Key Tower Cleveland United States
No. of offices	44 (June 2014)
No. of attorneys	Approx. 1,350 (March 2015)[1]
Key people	Mark J. Ruehlmann (Chairman and Global CEO)
Revenue	$870.5 million (£544 million) (2014)[1]
Profit per equity partner	$840,000 (2014)[1]
Date founded	1890 in Cleveland as Squire, Sanders & Dempsey 1887 in Leeds as Hammond Suddard 1962 in Washington D.C. as Patton Boggs
Company type	Swiss Verein
Website
www.squirepattonboggs.com

Squire Patton Boggs is an international legal practice with 44 offices in 21 countries including New York, Washington D.C., London, and Cleveland. It was formed in 2014 by the merger of multinational law firm Squire Sanders with Washington, D.C. based Patton Boggs, a white shoe law firm.^[2][3][4] It is one of the 30 largest law firms in the world by total headcount and gross revenue, twelfth largest firm in the UK by revenue, and one of the top 10 by number of countries occupied.^[5] It is also one of the largest US-headquartered law firms in Asia.

The firm advises a wide range of high profile clients in the oil and gas industry including Exxon Mobile and Royal Dutch Shell,^[6] U.S.-based blue-chip health care companies, corporate clients such as Barclays plc and Facebook, and major governmental bodies and organisations in the United States, Europe, and Asia.^[7] In addition to its large legal practice, Squire Patton Boggs maintain one of the largest lobbying practices in Washington D.C., gaining extensively from the merger with Patton Boggs, which was a prestigious white shoe law firm and the largest U.S. lobbying firm by revenue between 2003 and 2013.^[8][9]

However, due to partner defections following the merger with Squire Sanders, the combined firm's lobbying arm is currently the third-largest in the U.S. after Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld and Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck.^[10] The lobbying arm, long managed by Thomas Hale Boggs, Jr., is currently managed by former United States Senators John Breaux and Trent Lott.^[11]

History

Squire, Sanders & Dempsey

The firm was founded in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1890 as Squire, Sanders & Dempsey.

Until the 1990s, Squire was primarily an Ohio law firm, with only small offices in several other US cities and in Brussels. It was one of the first US law firms to expand into Eastern Europe in the wake of the Cold War, and under the leadership of firm chairman Thomas Stanton, opened several offices in the former Soviet bloc region during the 1990s, taking on a key role in the privatization of state enterprises in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Ukraine and Poland.^[12][13] It subsequently absorbed a number of other legal practices including several Pacific Rim offices of Graham & James and the Florida-based law firm of Steel Hector & Davis.^[14] The firm also made overtures toward mergers with Denton Wilde Sapte, Seyfarth Shaw and Bryan Cave under Stanton's leadership.^[12]

Hammonds

Hammonds was an international law firm headquartered in Leeds, United Kingdom, with offices in Beijing, Berlin, Birmingham, Brussels, Hong Kong, Leeds, Madrid, Manchester, Munich and Paris. Hammonds' origins dated back to the founding of a legal practice in Yorkshire in 1887. Although it was a major firm in Yorkshire and the West Midlands region, it did not open a London office until 1991.^[12]

In 2000 Hammond Suddards and Edge Ellison merged, forming Hammond Suddards Edge, at that time the 11th-largest law firm in the UK.^[15] The firm's rapid expansion left it 30 million GBP in debt in the early 2000s and led to a downsizing through 2005.^[13] The firm was ranked 20th in the UK by turnover in The Lawyer UK 100 2006, with a turnover of £132 million. Throughout 2005-2009, the firm underwent significant restructuring under the stewardship of Managing Partner Peter Crossley. As of 2009, the partnership consisted of approximately 180 partners and over 1,000 employees. Hammonds converted to a Limited Liability Partnership in May 2008.^[16]

Hammonds and Squire, Sanders & Dempsey announced that they were in merger talks in August 2010.^[17] The partnerships of both firms voted in favour of a merger in November 2010, and it was completed on 1 January 2011, forming the Squire Sanders Swiss verein.^[18] The merger with Hammonds added offices in Madrid, Berlin, Paris and Munich to the Squire Sanders network, in addition to significantly boosting its presence in the UK where it previously had only thirty lawyers.^[13] London overtook Cleveland as the largest office of the combined firm.^[12]

The American Lawyer estimated Squire Sanders to be the 24th largest law firm in the world by number of lawyers^[19] and 41st by annual revenue^[20] as of 2012.

Patton Boggs

The firm of Patton Boggs was founded in 1962 by James R. Patton, Jr. and joined soon after by George Blow and Thomas Hale Boggs, Jr. It has "participated in the formation of every major multilateral trade agreement considered by Congress."^[21] Boggs joined the firm in 1966 after serving as an economist for the Joint Economic Committee and in the executive office of President Lyndon B. Johnson.

The 2014 Vault.com survey of over 18,800 associates ranked Patton Boggs as having the best record for pro bono work in the country,^[22] and the firm was among the prestigious white-shoe law firms.^[23][24][25]

Following its involvement in a lawsuit with Chevron in Ecuador,^[26] Patton Boggs underwent layoffs and partner exits in 2013 amid a 12% drop in revenue, and entered merger talks with Squire Sanders in 2014.^[27] The firms announced that they would merge on June 1, 2014 under the name Squire Patton Boggs, adding 330 attorneys to Squire's existing headcount.^[28]

Squire Patton Boggs

Chart displaying top 25 lobbying firms, (rank for Jan-Jun 2010.) Squire Patton Boggs is on top of the list.

As a result of the merger, Patton Boggs closed its Anchorage, Alaska office, and a number of high-profile attorneys left the firm, including Benjamin Ginsberg and two other prominent Republican lawyers who joined Jones Day, and a number of healthcare-policy lawyers who joined Akin Gump.^[29]

The combined firm adopted Squire Sanders' existing merit pay system for partners over Patton Boggs' more traditional "eat what you kill" system.^[30] Partner compensation under the merit system ranges from $300,000 for some non-equity partners to $3 million for the three most highly compensated partners.^[12]

The firm currently posts an abnormally high leverage ratio, with almost eight attorneys to every partner, according to its 2014-end-of-the-year numbers for full-time lawyers. The D.C. offices of Squire Sanders and Patton Boggs recently moved into the same building, previously the long-standing home of legacy Patton Boggs. The combined firm kept separate revenue pools for its two legacy partnerships from the June merger until the end of 2014, but these are now unified.^[1]

Locations

As of 2015, Squire Patton Boggs has 44 offices in 21 countries on five continents.^[31] The combined firm advises a diverse mix of local and cross-border clients, from Fortune 100 and FTSE 100 corporations to emerging companies and from individuals to local and national governments.^[32][33]

Notable people and alumni

Notable cases and representations

• Represents Takata Corporation before the United States Congress, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and United States Department of Transportation on issues relating to air bag safety.^[34]
• Represents the Palestinian Authority in relation to procuring aid from the United States government.^[35]
• Represents DuPont in multidistrict tort litigation relating to PFOA contamination at the Washington Works plant in West Virginia.^[36]
• Represents the government of Turkey as a subcontractor to Gephardt Group in public relations activities related to the Syrian conflict.^[37]
• Advised the government of Myanmar on its 2014 telecom joint venture with KDDI and Sumitomo Corporation.^[38]
• Squire Sanders represented The Sugar Association and sugar producers in litigation against the Corn Refiners Association and high fructose corn syrup industry regarding the marketing of HFCS as an alternative to sugar. Patton Boggs advised two of the corn refiners involved in the case, leading to an inadvertent conflict of interest following the firms' merger.^[39]
• Patton Boggs worked in the mid-1990s for the Guatemalan dictatorship, insisting that Sister Dianna Ortiz, who was tortured and raped by members of a death squad, was actually the "victim to an out-of-control, sadomasochistic lover." ^[40]
• Patton Boggs was sued for damages by Chevron with respect to its activities since Spring 2010 on behalf of Burford Capital and other beneficiaries of an $18 billion judgment obtained by plaintiffs in Ecuador with respect to environmental and health damages resulting from the actions of Texaco, its subsidiary, in the Lago Agrio oil field. The action against Patton Boggs was part of litigation that had been in progress for at least 20 years in a number of national and international venues and on which Chevron was estimated to spend $250 million a year.^[41] In March 2014, the judge in the case issued a scathing ruling that concluded that the plaintiffs’ lawyer had indeed violated the RICO statute. Patton Boggs agreed to a settlement in the Chevron litigation, and two partners involved in the litigation left the firm, shortly prior to its merger with Squire Sanders, although an ethical claim filed against the firm shortly before the merger was left outstanding.^[42]
• Squire Patton Boggs represents the Central Bank of Venezuela in a Federal court action to prohibit a website, www.dolartoday.com, from publishing a free market exchange rate of the Boliviar Fuerte (BsF "Strong Bolivar") based on what buyers and sellers voluntarily pay at a Colombia border town when trading freely. The dolartoday rate differs by a factor of more than 100 from the official government imposed rate of 6.3. (At which, at the time of this edit, a carton of 30 eggs in Venezuela would in theory cost $66.66 USD at the government-imposed price of 420 BsF per carton.)^[43]
• Squire Patton Boggs represents Defendant Efraín Antonio Campo Flores, one of two Venezuelan Defendants charged with violating various sections of Title 21, USC, by conspiring to fly 5 kilograms and more of cocaine into the United States. The other Defendant is Franqui Francisco Flores de Freitas. As was widely reported in the press, Mssrs. Campo Flores and Flores De Freitas are cousins, and they are nephews of Cilia_Flores, a former Speaker of the Venezuelan National Assembly and current First Lady of Venezuela by virtue of her marriage to Nicolás Maduro Moros, President of Venezuela. Also and at the time of this edit, the international press have widely reported that undercover DEA agents filmed the criminal conspiracy of Mssrs. Campo Flores and Flores De Freitas, and that Haitian and DEA authorities subsequently apprehended them at a hotel in Haiti after traveling by private jet from Caracas. Thereafter and upon executing a search warrant on the Casa de Campo, La Romana, Dominican Republic home and 135 foot yacht of Mr. Flores De Freitas, authorities confiscated 10 kilograms heroin and a still undetermined amount of cocaine in 54 packages. Weeks later and presumably after further investigation, Campo Flores requested a public defender reportedly because Squire Patton Boggs, in attempting to comply with the Money Laundering Act of 1986 and subsequent case law, was unable to verify the legal -or clean- origin of their two-million dollar up-front retainer to represent Mr. Campo Flores.^[44] http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-oTTj1A6Gbr8/VnHcvW-tXuI/AAAAAAAAjHg/AmuV-a2jXHA/s1600/CWYFNUDXAAEkSol.png ^[45]
• Square Patton Boggs represented U.S. Ambassador Peter Romero in the Stanford Financial Group ponzi scheme case.^[46]

References

External links

• Squire Patton Boggs
• Squire Patton Boggs companies grouped at OpenCorporates
• Profile at the National Law Review

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