King & Spalding
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| Headquarters |
1180 Peachtree Atlanta |
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| No. of offices | 17 |
| No. of attorneys | 800 |
| Major practice areas | General practice |
| Revenue |
 $861.5 million USD (2013) |
| Date founded | 1885 (Atlanta) |
| Company type | LLP |
| Website | |
| www |
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King & Spalding LLP is an American law firm with 129 years of service. It was founded in Atlanta, Georgia in 1885 by Alexander C. King and Jack Spalding. The firm has expanded nationally, with offices in Austin, Charlotte, Houston, New York, San Francisco, Silicon Valley, and Washington, D.C. The firm has a London-based international arm, King & Spalding International LLP, which opened in 2003, and office or affiliates in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Frankfurt, Geneva, Moscow, Paris, Riyadh, Singapore and Tokyo.
On June 16, 2003, Corporate Board Member magazine named King & Spalding Atlanta's best corporate law firm for the second consecutive year, and in 2008, ranked the company among the top 20 law firms in the United States preferred by corporate general counsel to represent their companies on national matters.
King & Spalding's senior partners include former United States Attorney General Griffin Bell (now deceased). Georgia's former US Senator Sam Nunn (now retired), Indiana US Senator Dan Coats, former Florida US Senator Connie Mack, and former Georgia governor George Busbee (now deceased) also joined the firm after their retirement from public office. The firm's current chairman Robert Hays has held the position since 2005.
Notable representations include: Monsanto, The Coca-Cola Company, Chevron Corporation and General Motors Corporation.
In April 2011 the firm signed a $500,000 contract with the Republican-controlled United States House of Representatives to take on the case of defending the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage in federal law as the union between one man and one woman, in court for the House, with former Solicitor General Paul Clement, the firm's most prominent Washington, D.C. partner, as its lead attorney. After the contract was signed, the gay rights group Human Rights Campaign announced it would launch a publicity war to "shame" the firm and planned protest, ads in legal publications, and to try to influence students and potential clients dealings' with the firm. Soon after signing, the firm asked to withdraw from the case after facing criticism from gay rights groups, citing an "inadequate" vetting process. Clement immediately resigned from the firm, writing in a letter to King & Spalding Chairman Robert Hays, "I resign out of the firmly-held belief that a representation should not be abandoned because the client's legal position is extremely unpopular in certain quarters. Defending unpopular decisions is what lawyers do...Efforts to delegitimize any representation for one side of a legal controversy are a profound threat to the rule of law." He added, "If there were problems with the firm's vetting process, we should fix the vetting process, not drop the representation." Clement immediately joined Bancroft PLLC, which took the case.The National Law Journal wrote, "[the turn of events] leaves unanswered a myriad of questions about the status of Clement's other cases and clients, and the future of King & Spalding's D.C. appellate practice, which was built around Clement."
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