Firm Profiles

While its roots date back to 1866, when it was founded in Chicago, Sidley Austin will always have another key date in its history: May 2001, when it merged with New York’s Brown & Wood. The deal combined Sidley—already a major player in corporate, litigation, and regulatory work—with a respected Wall Street firm.

Known for its top–tier litigation practice—Sidley was a 2012 finalist for The American Lawyer’s Litigation Department of the Year and earned honorable mentions in 2004, 2006, 2008, and 2010—the firm draws half of its revenue from litigation. And no other firm is as active before the U.S. Supreme Court. Sidley, one of the first firms to establish a stand–alone appellate practice specifically for high court cases, plays a role, directly or indirectly, in some 40 percent of the cases heard each term. All told, its lawyers have argued more than 100 Supreme Court cases since the practice group was founded more than a quarter of a century ago. Much of the credit for that work—and the work itself—falls to Carter Phillips, the managing partner of Sidley’s 252–lawyer D.C. office, who had personally argued 73 high court cases by the end of 2011, more than any other lawyer in private practice.

Yet Sidley is not quite the profit–making machine that some other top ten firms are, and there have been some rough patches. Sidley let go of several hundred staff (including nearly 100 lawyers) at the height of the economic downturn in 2009. Even then, however, the firm was planning for a rebound. In December 2009 it announced a new Palo Alto office, with lawyers recruited from other firms and from Sidley’s San Francisco office. You don’t get to reach 150 years old, after all, without learning to adapt.

—Updated as of 1/1/12