Firm Overview
One thousand lawyers. Nineteen global offices. One compelling mission: to deliver success for clients. Morrison & Foerster is a leading, global law firm offering legal services in litigation, business, tax and employment. The firm earns its reputation for excellence by delivering results. Our one thousand lawyers worldwide offer unsurpassed expertise in finance and financial services, life sciences, and technology, legendary litigation capabilities, and unrivaled depth in Asia. We have one compelling mission: to deliver success for our clients.
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Leadership
Firm Management
Morrison & Foerster is managed by a Chair and three Managing Partners for Operations working closely with the Department Chairs, an Executive Committee, a Board of Directors, Office Managing Partners, Business Department Practice Group Heads and Litigation Team Leaders. Collaboratively they ensure the effective leadership, oversight and governance of the firm for its continued growth and health.
Practice Structure
There are four major departments at the firm: Business, Labor and Employment, Litigation and Tax. There are also several practice groups within the Business and Tax Departments focusing on specific types of law.
In addition to four major departments, our structure includes cross-departmental groups, such as the Life Sciences group and our Intellectual Property group. We also encourage more experienced attorneys to develop specialized expertise and experience, sometimes in specific industries.
Our client service philosophy is to assemble the best team for the challenge at hand, allowing lawyers from multiple practice departments and offices to work together to provide the expertise our clients need. This is not only good for clients, but also serves the career development of our associates, providing opportunities to gain experience in multiple areas of the law.
Pro-Bono & Community Commitment
Morrison & Foerster has a tradition that strongly encourages and values pro bono work. One of our most important policies has been to treat our pro bono work in the same manner as we treat our billable work, including applying the same quality standards and providing full credit for pro bono work towards our associates’ and partners’ client service hours goals. Our greatest efforts have focused on assisting children in poverty, school education issues, civil rights and civil liberties cases, international human rights and political asylum matters, and issues of housing and homelessness. Our business, tax and labor attorneys have counseled over 150 nonprofit organizations.
We also participate in our communities through volunteer efforts and charitable contributions. Attorneys and staff volunteer their leadership skills to a wide variety of local and national nonprofit causes. Our offices provide team volunteer opportunities, while our Community Service Day encourages staff to take a paid day off to pursue their own means of community assistance. The Morrison & Foerster Foundation operates as a separate nonprofit organization that allows the Firm to make the best use of its charitable resources in each of the communities the Firm serves. It also offers a number of matching gift programs to encourage philanthropy among the Firm’s attorneys and employees, and to strengthen the impact of that support.
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Diversity
Long before the word became fashionable, Morrison & Foerster made a strong commitment to the idea, and the ideals, of diversity. Thirty years ago, our partners—progressive, forward-looking individuals believed that diversity was worth pursuing both as the right thing to do and because it would be invaluable to clients. Today, a commitment to diversity has become an integral part of our firm’s identity, recognized by many respected institutions including Vault.com that ranked us the # 1 law firm for diversity in 2004.
Our commitment to diversity has generated a culture of mutual respect throughout the firm. The term “collegial” is particularly apt at Morrison & Foerster. We genuinely like working together, which offers a powerful benefit to clients: Our turnover rate is lower than many comparable firms, which ultimately translates into stable, enduring relationships with clients. Moreover, the culture at Morrison & Foerster fosters a team approach to client challenges, leveraging our collective experience to generate better, more cost-effective solutions. A diverse team of lawyers reflects the diversity of the real world of judges, jurors, and the legal system as a whole, clearly benefiting our ability to represent clients in the courtroom.
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Recruitment
Morrison & Foerster hires the best talent available for every position in our firm to enable us to deliver excellent client service and outstanding results to our clients around the world.
- We offer attorneys and staff an opportunity to: