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Cravath, Swaine & Moore
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Template:Infobox Company Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP (“Cravath”) is a prominent American law firm based in New York City, United States with an additional office in London. Cravath was founded in 1819 and ranks among the world's most prestigious law firms.[1]
History
The firm arose from two predecessor firms, one in New York City and one in Auburn, New York. In 1854 these firms merged to form the firm of Blatchford, Seward & Griswold. Name partner William H. Seward later served as both governor of and a senator from New York, then became Secretary of State under Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson. In 1867, he negotiated the purchase of Alaska from Russia in a transaction contemporaries derisively called "Seward's Folly". Paul Drennan Cravath joined the firm in 1899. He instituted the "Cravath System", a training program for associates which rotates them among the firm's partners within a given practice area. After a series of name changes, the Cravath, Swaine & Moore name was made permanent in 1944.
Cravath has represented high profile businesses, ranging from Samuel F.B. Morse, the inventor of the telegraph to corporations such as IBM, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, and CBS. It also performed the legal work necessary to form NBC. More recent decades have seen Cravath represent Netscape in its antitrust suit against Microsoft, resulting in a $750 million settlement; major merger and acquisition deals, such as the DuPont-Conoco merger, the Ford-Jaguar merger, the Bristol-Myers-Squibb merger, the Time-Warner merger, and the AOL-Time-Warner merger; and two famed libel suits: defending Time Inc. against Israeli General Ariel Sharon, and also defending CBS against U.S. Army General William Westmoreland.
Unlike certain rivals such as Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, Cravath has remained relatively small. Its approximately 500 lawyers are located primarily in the New York Office, with just a few dozen in London. The firm had an office in Hong Kong from 1993 to 2003, a Paris office until the early 1980s and a Washington D.C. office at one point.
Hiring
The firm is known for focusing its hiring on associates straight from law school; lateral hires are rare at the associate level and new partners are almost never taken on. In 2005, Cravath hired its first lateral partner in more than two decades, Andrew W. Needham, formerly a tax partner at Willkie Farr & Gallagher[2] and in 2007, the firm brought in Richard Levin from Skadden Arps to boost its bankruptcy practice.[3]. Entry to the firm is highly selective, generally open to only the most academically successful students from the most elite law schools in the United States and Canada. As with many top law firms, employee turnover is exceedingly high, with many attorneys departing the firm following a relatively brief tenure. As a rule of thumb, half of an entering class departs by the end of their second year, and three quarters depart by the end of their fourth year.
Famous current and former employees
- Thomas D. Barr, litigator who represented IBM in a 13-year antitrust case
- Deborah Batts, New York federal judge
- David Boies, litigator who represented Al Gore in Bush v. Gore
- Richard C. Breeden, Activist Hedge Fund Manager and former SEC (SEC) Chairman
- Bruce Bromley, famous litigator in the 1950s and 1960s
- Valerie Caproni, FBI General Counsel
- John C. Coffee, professor at Columbia Law School, securities law expert
- William O. Douglas, Supreme Court Justice and SEC chairman
- Robert D. Joffe, antitrust and corporate law expert, key figure behind the AOL-Time Warner merger
- Roswell Gilpatric, Deputy Secretary of Defense, 1961-1964; Chairman, Task Force on Nuclear Proliferation, 1964[4]
- John Gleeson, New York federal judge
- Robert A. Kindler, Vice Chairman of Morgan Stanley
- Adebayo Ogunlesi, Chairman and Managing Partner of Global Infrastructure Partners
- John H. Pickering, a founding partner of Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering
- Gerald Posner, journalist
- Adam Silver, NBA Deputy Commissioner and COO
- James B. Stewart, journalist and author
- Thomas Hauser, author
- Elizabeth Strong, New York federal judge
- Bruce Wasserstein, Chairman of Lazard
- John White, SEC Director of Corporation Finance
- Jack Balkin, professor at Yale Law School
- Frederick A.O. Schwarz, Jr., New York City Corporation Counsel.
Rankings
The firm consistently ranks at or near the top of various industry surveys, such as the Vault.com Partner (#1, 2008) and Associate (#2, 2008), prestige surveys. It consistently ranks within the top 3 on numerous Vault.com specialty rankings, including Litigation, Corporate, Securities and Mergers & Acquisitions.
Cravath regularly appears within the top 3 on The American Lawyer's annual listing of highest profits per partner. In 2007, Cravath posted profits per partner of $3,015,000.[5] While Cravath had for many years generated the highest profits per partner of any large law firm worldwide, rival New York firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, the mergers and acquisitions powerhouse, has generated larger profits during the last five years, earning profits per partner of $3,975,000 in 2007. In addition, several other New York law firms, such as Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft; Simpson Thacher & Bartlett; and Sullivan & Cromwell have recently generated profits per partner approaching Cravath's.
References
- ↑ Vault Partner Prestige Rankings
- ↑ Cravath Hires Tax Partner, Its First Lateral in Decades
- ↑ Cravath starts a bankruptcy practice
- ↑ "Rosewell L. Gilpatric, Lawyer and Kennedy Aide, Dies at 89." The New York Times. March 17, 1996. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B01E2D61639F934A25750C0A960958260
- ↑ www.law.com
