Winston & Strawn LLP is an international law firm headquartered in Chicago. It has more than 900 attorneys spread across ten offices in the United States and six offices in Europe, Asia and South America. Founded in 1853, it is one of the largest and oldest law firms in Chicago. The firm is known for its litigation practice across a variety of fields.

Offices

The firm's largest office by number of employees is Chicago. It maintains other U.S. offices in Charlotte, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, San Francisco, Silicon Valley, and Washington, D.C., and international offices in Europe (Brussels, London, and Paris) and Asia (Shanghai).

History

Winston & Strawn LLP was founded in Chicago in 1853 by Frederick H. Winston, who was joined by the firm's other name partner, Silas H. Strawn, in 1892. The white-shoe firm has made a series of mergers and opened additional offices. The firm operates in the Cravath System tradition, with practices such as lateral hiring. In 2000, the firm merged with the New York office of Whitman Breed Abbott & Morgan. This added about 80 attorneys in corporate law, capital markets, project finance, and venture capital, bringing its total of New York lawyers to 250. In May, 2012, 60 attorneys joined the firm from Dewey & LeBoeuf. In 2016 Winston & Strawn became the first Chicago law firm to match the record starting salary of $180,000 for first-year associates, beginning a "salary war" among large Chicago law firms after years of no change. In 2016, the firm announced a gender-neutral parental leave policy, allowing both male and female associates to take up to 20 weeks of paid parental leave within the first year of a child's life. In February 2017, the firm opened an office in Dallas with twenty-three partners from eight different law firms in Texas., In July of that year it added twelve partners to its employee benefits and executive compensation team, all from McDermott Will & Emery LLP. In January, 2020, the firm closed its office in Dubai, which the firm had opened four years earlier. In August 2020, the firm announced the formation of an Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Advisory Team, designed to assist companies navigate their ESG Profiles. From mid-2020, the firm introduced austerity measures, including cuts to associate numbers and partner compensation, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Revenue

In 2017, the firm's reported revenue was $985 million in 2017. Its reported 2019 revenue was $1.01 billion. In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, revenue decreased about three percent, to $981.2 million, while partner profits increased by more than four percent due to reduced expenses.

Notable representations

Winston & Strawn has handled high-profile matters for its clients, including its organizing the Union Stockyard and Transit Company in 1894; challenging the War Powers Act in 1944 on behalf of department store Montgomery Ward; and representing the Atlanta Braves baseball franchise in 1966 litigation involving its relocation from Milwaukee to Atlanta. More recently:

Notable current and former employees