Dewey Ballantine
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| Headquarters | New York City, New York, United States |
|---|---|
| No. of offices | 12 before merger |
| No. of attorneys | approximately 500 before merger |
| Major practice areas | corporate law |
| Date founded | 1909 |
| Founder |
Grenville Clark Francis W. Bird Elihu Root, Jr. |
| Dissolved | 2007 — merged with LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene & MacRae to become Dewey & LeBoeuf |
Dewey Ballantine LLP was a corporate law firm headquartered in New York City. In 2007, Dewey Ballantine merged with LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene & MacRae to form Dewey & LeBoeuf. Dewey Ballantine underwent numerous name changes throughout its history as partners left to serve in government positions or form new firms.
In 1909, three recent Harvard Law School graduates created a law partnership on Wall Street. The founding partners were Francis W. Bird, Grenville Clark, and Elihu Root, Jr., and named the firm Root, Clark & Bird. The firm took advantages of Root's connections through his father, Elihu Root, a former Senator and Cabinet member. This gave them entry to high financial circles, establishing a thriving law practice.
In 1913, the firm merged with the firm of Buckner & Howland (recently founded by Emory Buckner) to form Root, Clark, Buckner & Howland.
In 1919, Arthur A. Ballantine, the Internal Revenue Service's first solicitor, joined the firm. He and Emory Buckner ran the firm throughout the 1920s and 1930s. During the Great Depression, the firm flourished by moving away from its traditional focus on litigation and to begin focusing on bankruptcy and reorganizations, and then by taking advantage of the New Deal to build a thriving regulatory practice.
The firm also built up a corporate practice, serving clients such as AT&T and Standard Oil. Overall, the firm expanded from 8 to 74 associates and opened a second office in Washington, D.C. Both Henry Friendly and John Marshall Harlan II worked at the firm during this period.
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