Firm Profiles

It’s only fitting, perhaps, that a firm with a knack for getting in the newspapers – representing clients like BP p.l.c. in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill litigation, and counting well-known figures like Robert Bork and Kenneth Starr among its alumni made its name defending the press. While Kirkland & Ellis’s modern namesakes, Weymouth Kirkland and Howard Ellis, didn’t join the firm until six years after its founding in 1909, they burnished the firm’s reputation representing the Chicago Tribune (published by firm cofounder Robert McCormick) and other newspapers in landmark free speech cases, and pioneering the concept of “fair comment.” While Kirkland & Ellis may not be known for its international footprint – in early 2011 it counted just four overseas locations among its ten offices – it is recognized for its take-no-prisoners litigation style and success. It was recognized in three consecutive Litigation Department of the Year competitions by The American Lawyer, winning the title once (2008) and taking an honorable mention twice (2010 and 2012).

Kirkland can also be a very profitable place to work for its partners. In 2011 the firm ranked sixth in profits per partner, just crossing the $3 million mark – a marked jump from its 2010 figure of nearly $2.5 million.

Overall, Kirkland ranked sixth in gross revenues in 2011, seeing a 14 percent spike in revenues from the previous year. Arguably, one of the factors that has helped Kirkland adapt to – and ultimately thrive in – a changed economic climate is its longtime embrace of alternative fees. For more than two decades, while many other firms resisted any move away from the billable hour, Kirkland has taken cases under contingency, fixed-fee, holdback/success fee, and other non-traditional arrangements.

Yet weathering the recession did not come without costs. Like many of its brethren, Kirkland laid off attorneys at the height of the downturn (its lawyer count of 1,379 on the 2011 Am Law 100 list was a drop from 1,411 the year before). Morale, too, suffered, at least among the more junior lawyers.

Kirkland ranked 117th on The American Lawyer-s 2010 Midlevel Associates Survey, which was conducted when firms were feeling the full impact of the recession. That improved markedly, however, on the 2011 survey, with Kirkland coming in at eighty-first – a sign that a firm known for remaking itself in the face of change is adapting once again.

—Updated as of 1/1/12