Cravath, Swaine & Moore

Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP (“Cravath”) is a prominent American law firm based in New York City, with an additional office in London. The second oldest firm in the country (after New York's Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft), Cravath was founded in 1819 and consistently ranks amongst the world's most prestigious law firms.

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 Samuel Blatchford later served on the United States Supreme Court. 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 the London office, which opened in 1973. The firm had an office in Hong Kong from 1994 to 2003, a Paris office from 1927 to 1934 and 1963 to 1981, and a Washington D.C. office from 1924 until 1946 (which later evolved into Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering—a predecessor firm of WilmerHale).

Rankings

The firm consistently ranks at or near the top of various industry surveys, such as the Vault.com Partner (#1, 2009) and Associate (#2, 2009) prestige surveys. It consistently ranks within the top 3 on numerous Vault.com specialty rankings, including Antitrust, Corporate, Litigation, Mergers & Acquisitions, Securities and Tax.^[1] Chambers and Partners ranks Cravath in its top tiers for Antitrust, Banking & Finance, Capital Markets, Corporate/M&A, Litigation and Tax.^[2]

Cravath regularly appears within the top 3 on The American Lawyer's annual listing of highest profits per partner. In 2008, Cravath posted profits per partner of $3,300,000—the second most among all firms.^[3] 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 several years, earning profits per partner of $4,945,000 in 2008. In addition, several other New York law firms, such as Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft ($2,725,000); Simpson Thacher & Bartlett ($2,875,000); and Sullivan & Cromwell ($3,055,000) have recently generated profits per partner approaching Cravath's.

Hiring

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, a third of an entering class departs by the end of their third year, and another third of those remaining depart by the end of their fifth year.^[4]

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 Andrew W. Needham, formerly a tax partner at Willkie Farr & Gallagher,^[5] as the first lateral partner since Herbert L. Camp, also a tax partner, from the now-defunct Donovan Leisure Newton & Irvine in 1987. Camp, however, had previously been a Cravath associate and is therefore not considered a true lateral because he started his career there; the last true lateral at the firm was Roswell Magill, a former Treasury Department official, who became a Cravath tax partner in 1943. In 2007, the firm brought in Richard Levin from Skadden Arps to boost its new bankruptcy practice.^[6]

Famous current and former employees

Judiciary

• Deborah Batts, New York federal judge
• Samuel Blatchford, U.S. Supreme Court Justice
• William O. Douglas, U.S. Supreme Court Justice and SEC chairman
• John Gleeson, New York federal judge
• Elizabeth Stong, New York federal judge

Government Service

• Richard C. Breeden, activist hedge fund manager and former SEC (SEC) Chairman
• Valerie Caproni, FBI General Counsel
• Kenneth Dam, Deputy Secretary of Treasury, 2001-2003; Deputy Secretary of State, 1982-1985
• Roswell Gilpatric, Deputy Secretary of Defense, 1961-1964; Chairman, Task Force on Nuclear Proliferation, 1964^[7]
• Roswell Magill, Treasury Department official
• John J. McCloy, former Assistant Secretary of War, former president of the World Bank, former adviser to several U.S. presidents
• Frederick A. O. Schwarz, Jr., New York City Corporation Counsel
• John White, SEC Director of Corporation Finance
• Dick Zimmer, former Representative for New Jersey's 12th congressional district and 2008 candidate for U.S. Senate

Business

• Robert A. Kindler, Vice Chairman of Morgan Stanley
• Adebayo Ogunlesi, Chairman and Managing Partner of Global Infrastructure Partners
• Adam Silver, NBA Deputy Commissioner and COO
• Bruce Wasserstein, Chairman of Lazard

Law

• Thomas D. Barr, litigator who represented IBM in a 13-year antitrust case
• David Boies, litigator who represented Al Gore in Bush v. Gore, founding partner of Boies, Schiller & Flexner
• Bruce Bromley, famous litigator in the 1950s and 1960s
• James Colliton, convicted felon (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/03/nyregion/03plea.html)
• Robert D. Joffe, antitrust and corporate law expert, key figure behind the AOL-Time Warner merger
• John H. Pickering, founding partner of Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering
• David Louis Schwartz http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1993/06/21/1993_06_21_054_TNY_CARDS_000363576

Academia

• Aditi Bagchi, professor at University of Pennsylvania Law School
• Jack Balkin, professor at Yale Law School
• John S. Beckerman, Associate Dean at Rutgers Law School-Camden
• Thomas J. Brennan, professor at Northwestern University School of Law
• John C. Coffee, professor at Columbia Law School, securities law expert
• Gary Francione, animal rights theorist and professor at Rutgers Law School
• Wulf Kaal, professor at Mississippi College School of Law
• John Leitner, the youngest professor in the history of Seoul National University^[8]
• Charles A. Reich, former Yale Law School professor
• Catherine Struve, professor at University of Pennsylvania Law School, reporter to the Judicial Conference Advisory Committee on Appellate Rules

Publishing

• Thomas Hauser, author
• Gerald Posner, journalist
• James B. Stewart, journalist and author

References

Further reading

• Swaine, Robert T. (2007).The Cravath Firm and Its Predecessors: 1819-1947. Clark, NJ: Lawbook Exchange.

External links

• Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP website
• Yahoo! Profile
• LawPeriscope Profile