Kirkland & Ellis

American law firm

Kirkland & Ellis LLP is an American multinational law firm headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. Founded in 1909, Kirkland & Ellis is the largest law firm in the world by revenue and the seventh largest by number of attorneys, and was the first law firm in the world to reach US$4 billion in annual revenue. Many attorneys from the firm have served as federal officials or judges, including United States Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and former Attorneys General William Barr and Robert Bork.

In 1909, two attorneys, Stuart G. Shepard and Robert R. McCormick, formed the Chicago based partnership that would eventually become Kirkland & Ellis. McCormick was the grandson of Joseph Medill, who had founded the Chicago Tribune. McCormick became president of the Tribune Company in 1914 and, in 1925, sole publisher of the Tribune. Weymouth Kirkland and his associate Howard Ellis joined the firm in 1915. Kirkland served as chief counsel to the Tribune and other newspapers in various free speech and defamation cases, including Near v. Minnesota. In 1938, Kirkland and Ellis hired young trial lawyer Hammond Chaffetz from the U. S. Department of Justice. Chaffetz spent six decades with the firm, during which it grew to about 780 lawyers, making it one of the 30 largest in the country. Kirkland & Ellis has 15 offices in four countries. In 2020, "Kirkland, along with some other out of town firms like Sidley Austin and Latham & Watkins," have been reported in media as using "aggressive lateral recruiting to draw from New York's dealmaking talent pool." The firm earned just under $5 billion in revenue in 2020.

The American Lawyer ranked Kirkland & Ellis as the 2018 Law Firm of the Year. "Mergers & Acquisitions" ranked Kirkland & Ellis as the 2019 Law Firm of the Year for advising on 400 U. S. based deals (more than twice that of the firm ranked second), and for advising on the largest number of global deals, in each case, in 2019. As of 2021, Am Law lists Kirkland & Ellis as the largest law firm in the United States by gross revenue and third greatest in profits per equity partner. Kirkland & Ellis was ranked second in the 2017 ATL Power 100 law firm rankings. Vault ranked Kirkland & Ellis as the most prestigious firm in Chicago and the number one firm in the U. S. for private equity, restructuring and business outlook in 2018.

The firm has endowed professorships in its name at four law schools: Harvard Law School, Northwestern University School of Law, University of Michigan Law School, and the University of Chicago Law School.