The Legal 500

For 100 years, major national and international clients have called upon Kirkland & Ellis to handle complicated corporate, restructuring, tax, intellectual property, litigation and counselling matters. Today, more than 1,500 lawyers in ten international offices are dedicated to providing the highest quality service to clients around the world.

The firm: The London office, with approximately 120 lawyers focusing on private equity, investment funds, mergers and acquisitions, banking and finance, capital markets, international arbitration and litigation, competition, intellectual property and restructuring matters, has been serving UK, European and US clients since 1995.

Types of work undertaken: Corporate: Kirkland’s corporate lawyers cover the full spectrum of corporate transactions important to businesses in today’s global marketplace. Because of the firm’s consistently high volume of complex transactional engagements, it has developed a broad vision of the issues that confront business organisations and an aptitude for developing novel, creative and constructive solutions. Kirkland’s emphasis on teamwork allows it to synthesise the speciality areas needed to support a top-tier transactional practice for the benefit of its clients.

Banking and finance: Kirkland has long been recognised as a leader in acquisition finance. Kirkland’s approach to acquisition finance, like the entire corporate practice, is heavily business-oriented. Kirkland believes that its lawyers should understand the business being acquired and must always focus on its clients’ business objectives. Kirkland also has unsurpassed experience and depth in structuring and negotiating the various layers of senior and subordinated debt and equity financing in connection with leveraged acquisitions.

Capital markets: Kirkland represents issuers, sponsors and underwriters in a wide variety of international securities transactions, with a particular focus on offerings of high-yield and other complex debt securities.

Tax: the firm’s tax practice group provides its clients with the most creative tax planning available in a responsible and cost-efficient manner. The practice has developed a strong international reputation for providing sophisticated tax counselling and effectively representing its clients in tax disputes worldwide. Kirkland’s tax practice can be divided broadly into two areas: tax planning in connection with mergers, acquisitions, buyouts, fund formation, restructurings, financing, executive compensation plans and other sophisticated transactions; and contested tax matters.

Restructuring: by combining sophisticated business advisory and crisis management skills with extensive experience in UK, US and international insolvency matters, Kirkland’s restructuring group navigates clients through the turmoil of situations involving financially troubled companies. The firm has earned a distinguished reputation by achieving positive results for a wide range of global clients in complex corporate restructuring, workout and bankruptcy planning, negotiation and litigation.

Competition: Kirkland advises on all aspects of EU and UK competition law, including merger control, market dominance, cartel investigations, sector inquiries and private enforcement; representing clients across a range of industries, including financial services, media and communications, energy and transport.

International arbitration and litigation: the firm represents multinational corporations, governments and government-owned entities in international arbitration and litigation cases around the world. Kirkland’s lawyers are also recognised for their experience in the conduct of white-collar crime investigations on a global basis.

Intellectual property: Kirkland represents some of the world’s leading technology companies and brings its expertise to all areas of IP, patent litigation, trade mark matters, outsourcing, computer software, licensing, distribution, joint venture agreements, biotechnology, data protection and e-commerce issues, as well as competition law-related matters.

Other offices: Chicago, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Munich, New York, Palo Alto, San Francisco, Shanghai, Washington DC

Number of UK partners 45
Number of other UK fee-earners 55