Headquarters | 601 Massachusetts Avenue NW Washington, D.C. |
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No. of offices | 9 |
No. of attorneys | 700+ |
Major practice areas | General practice |
Revenue | $650.0m (2015) |
Date founded | 1946 (Washington, D.C.) |
Company type | LLP |
Website | |
www.arnoldporter.com |
Arnold & Porter LLP is an international law firm based in Washington, D.C. Arnold & Porter is well known for its trial, corporate, and antitrust work, and for its pro bono commitments. Founded in 1946, it is one of the largest law firms in the world today.
Arnold & Porter was founded in 1946 by New Deal veterans Thurman Arnold, a former Yale Law School professor and U.S. Court of Appeals Judge on the D.C. Circuit, and Abe Fortas, another former Yale Law School professor who later became a Supreme Court Justice. In 1947, Paul A. Porter, a former Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission joined the firm and it was renamed Arnold, Fortas & Porter. In 1965, Abe Fortas' name was dropped from the firm's moniker after his ascension to the Supreme Court.
In November 2016, Arnold & Porter announced that it would be merging with New York-based firm Kaye Scholer to form Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP, with approximately 1000 attorneys across nine domestic and four international offices. The merger is scheduled to take effect January 1, 2017.
Prominent cases the firm has been involved with include its work as counsel to Clarence Earl Gideon in the landmark case of Gideon v. Wainwright, subject of the Edgar Award-winning book Gideon's Trumpet by Anthony Lewis. The firm also represented the survivors of the Buffalo Creek Flood, one of the worst mining disasters in U.S. history. Their representation was the subject of the book Buffalo Creek Disaster by Gerald M. Stern, which is required reading in many law schools. In addition, it was the only significant law firm to represent the victims of Joseph McCarthy and the "loyalty review boards" that ruined the careers of many loyal government employees. All three founders of the firm were so upset by the use of secret evidence that at one point the firm's lawyers were spending half of their time fighting these cases.