It’s more than what you do: it’s how you do it. Across sectors and borders, in board rooms and courtrooms, we measure our success by yours. And in our interactions, we commit to making your O’Melveny experience as satisfying as the outcomes we help you achieve. Our greatest accomplishment is ensuring that you never have to choose between premier lawyering and exceptional service. So, tell us. What do you want to achieve?
Whether we’re connecting clients to new business opportunities, collaborating on strategies to push through their obstacles, or trading ideas for maximizing value, our clients’ business objectives are what set our agenda.
Our commitment starts with great legal results, but doesn’t end there. It also means:
It’s an approach that comes naturally to us, and always has. At our core, you’ll find a dedication to excellence, a drive to lead and innovate, and a deep sense of civic responsibility. These characteristics—established by our founders—have anchored us for more than 130 years, and remain every bit as important to who we are today.
With some of the world’s leading insolvency lawyers, O’Melveny helps clients face virtually any aspect of a restructuring matter—whether it be a company facing financial distress, significant creditors of a troubled company or an investor looking for the opportunity to purchase a distressed business or certain of its assets.
Our restructuring lawyers, many of whom are also experienced litigators, have played a leadership role in a number of the largest and highest profile restructuring matters in recent years, including the ongoing financial restructuring of Puerto Rico with more than US$70 billion of debt and the bankruptcies of Verso, Energy Future Holdings, LINN Energy, Homer City Generation, Colt Defense, Cal Dive International, Peabody Energy, Hancock Fabrics, New Century Financial, Dynegy,General Motors, and Chrysler. Our clients, which include some of the most well known names in finance, turn to O’Melveny in their most challenging times and when the stakes are at their highest. The reason is simple: for nearly a century O’Melveny has employed exceptional creativity and vigorous advocacy to preserve and maximize economic value for clients across industries and borders.
Our restructuring team has broad experience representing the full panoply of participants in bankruptcies and out-of-court restructurings. They include:
Given the complexity of the issues our clients face, we also draw on the firm’s finance, capital markets, M&A, tax, labor, and litigation specialists to ensure all of our clients’ interests are met.
O’Melveny’s Corporate and Transactional team helps clients achieve their strategic goals in the 21st-century marketplace. We work with leading clients in a wide range of industries to complete challenging mergers, acquisitions, and cross-border undertakings, resolve crisis boardroom situations, address compliance issues, navigate day-to-day corporate concerns, develop effective intellectual property, tax, employment, and benefits strategies, and more.
Our team provides efficient and accessible advice spanning the full suite of practice areas relevant to public and private company executives. With global resources and deep industry knowledge and understanding, we offer practical counseling that never loses sight of what best serves a client’s needs and goals.
In an increasingly predatory intellectual property environment, O’Melveny works closely with clients, providing practical, results-oriented advice customized to meet their business goals. We counsel on the acquisition, exploitation, enforcement, and defense of intellectual property rights worldwide, with lawyers who have broad industry experience and specialized academic backgrounds, including advanced technical and scientific degrees.
Whether defending a bet-the-company patent infringement case in Texas, or negotiating a cross-border technology acquisition agreement in Asia, we provide comprehensive legal services to assist clients as they confront complex patent, trade secret, copyright, trademark, and technology law issues.
O’Melveny’s Labor and Employment team helps clients confront the full range of issues they encounter as employers—whether it’s non-compete and negative covenant litigation, wage and hour class actions, discrimination and wrongful discharge claims, or traditional labor and union issues. We work by building effective, collaborative relationships with our clients, grounded in an in-depth understanding of their business and industry, and the risks and opportunities they face on a daily basis.
We are a leading advocate for employers in litigation brought by single plaintiffs, multiple parties, and massive purported class actions. Our clients have succeeded in obtaining dismissals of all or substantial portions of class actions at the early stages of litigation—prevailing on demurrers, motions to dismiss, and summary judgments, as well as defeating motions for class certification. By working closely with our colleagues in other practice areas—including class actions, white-collar defense, restructuring, employee benefits, and intellectual property—we respond quickly and efficiently to large-scale workforce crises, including cases dealing with unlawful competition, trade secret misappropriation, covenants not to compete, and employee raiding.
We also provide clients with ongoing advice in connection with union-avoidance, elections, decertification proceedings, strikes, injunctions, and other traditional labor matters. In addition to day-to-day counseling in these areas, we represent employers in the defense and prosecution of unfair labor practice charges and other issues that arise before and against the National Labor Relations Board.
Businesses across a range of industries also turn to O’Melveny for trusted, tailored advice regarding personnel decisions, employment contracts, personnel policies and procedures, and disciplinary actions and terminations.
O’Melveny’s reputation as a litigation powerhouse is built on a long record of delivering exceptional results for clients when they need us most. From Silicon Valley to Seoul, Hollywood to the Hill, Wall Street to the Web, we guide clients through cases that seek billions of dollars in damages, that challenge the business practices of entire industries, or that attempt to criminalize broad swaths of corporate conduct.
The American Lawyer has likened our litigation team to a “relentless Land Rover”—forging ahead no matter how daunting the obstacles to our clients’ goals. As a perennial honoree in the magazine’s “Litigation Department of the Year” competition, we have been recognized for our courtroom skills and versatility, “geographic and industry breadth befitting a first-tier national litigation shop,” and string of “stunning wins.”
We help our clients prevail at every stage: on the pleadings, at trial, in settlements, and on appeal. Most years their victories span all US jurisdictions, including courts in nearly every state, every federal circuit, and frequently the US Supreme Court. To serve multinational clients, we have seasoned litigators on the ground in Asia and Europe who work in tandem with colleagues in our US offices.
While our willingness to go to the mat for our clients is what keeps companies wanting to work with us again and again, we never lose sight of our clients’ business interests. Our efficient and effective advocacy skills often resolve cases before they ever reach trial. And some of our biggest litigation successes have been cases where we helped our client avoid litigation altogether.
What Sets Us Apart
Targets of government scrutiny face critical decisions. And in those moments, experience counts. O’Melveny’s white collar defense team draws on a wealth of experience both inside and outside government to help clients make the right decisions.
For decades, we have successfully represented corporations, board committees, individual officers and directors, and others in Congressional, SEC, DOJ, attorney-general, self-regulatory, and internal investigations. In fact, Chambers USA refers to O’Melveny as “hugely experienced” in this area. Our advice has prevented statutory and regulatory violations and served as important evidence in our clients’ defense during government inquiries. We also routinely work with clients to develop and enhance compliance programs, and to assess and mitigate risks before they lead to government inquiries or civil litigation.
Coordinated investigations by various government agencies are increasingly common and routinely result in parallel criminal and regulatory proceedings as well as private civil litigation. We have helped numerous clients defend against such multi-front onslaughts with a global defense strategy that carefully considers how each proceeding impacts the others.
Should cases proceed to trial, we have a long track record of success trying criminal and civil cases to judgment or verdict in federal and state courts throughout the United States. Our advocacy skills have also led to victories in proceedings before arbitral tribunals and governmental agencies in Europe and Asia.
Our experience covers a broad array of substantive areas, including:
