Jenkens & Gilchrist
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| Headquarters |
 Dallas, TX
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|---|---|
| No. of offices | ? |
| No. of attorneys | 600+ |
| Major practice areas | General practice |
| Revenue | — |
| Date founded | 1951 (Dallas, TX) |
| Company type | DEFUNCT |
Jenkens & Gilchrist, P.C. was a Dallas-based law firm, founded in 1951 as Jenkens & Bowens to service the various businesses controlled by Clint Murchison, Jr. The Dallas Morning News was an early client. As a result of the extent of Murchison family holdings, the firm soon developed expertise in corporate transactions.
In the 1980s, the firm faced liability and financial difficulties resulting from involvement in the Savings and Loan Crisis. Jenkens settled a number of malpractice lawsuits in 1987 for $18 million. In the 1990s, Jenkens saw intense growth and added offices outside Texas for the first time to expand from a regional into a national law firm.
Opening a Chicago office with a tax attorney team from Altheimer & Gray in 1998 would become the most fateful for the firm. In 2000, the firm merged with Parker Chapin Flattau & Klimpl to launch in New York City. By 2001, the firm employed more than 600 attorneys, reaching its peak in size. In 2004, the firm advised Fossil, Inc. in its $173 million secondary securities offering managed jointly by J.P. Morgan, Jefferies & Company, and CIBC World Markets.
In the 1990s, the Chicago office began a lucrative practice of offering tax shelter advice to a variety of wealthy corporate and individual clients, primarily by drafting opinion letters stating that certain tax schemes were compliant with the Internal Revenue Code. The Chicago tax group earned $267 million from 1998 to 2003. The group worked in coordination with tax advisers at Ernst & Young.
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Wikipedia