For more than 160 years, Winston & Strawn LLP has served as a trusted adviser and advocate for clients across virtually every industry. In that time, through careful growth and thoughtful fiscal management, we have built a law practice with tremendous breadth and a global reach. We are proud of the many accolades we have received over the years—a tribute to our lawyers’ creativity, flexibility, depth of experience, and commitment. The most meaningful accolade to us, though, is the continued trust and confidence of our clients.
In a global business and legal environment marked by change, U.S. and multinational companies, financial institutions, investors, and entrepreneurs face demanding challenges that significantly impact their businesses. Our team of corporate lawyers partners with clients around the globe to navigate these challenges, adapt to regulatory change, and move transactions to the finish line.
Our transactional lawyers represent public and private companies, leading financial institutions, private equity and investment funds, funding sources, investors, and emerging companies in connection with high-profile and complex transactions—from cross-border acquisitions, divestitures, and mergers to joint ventures, spinoffs, and distressed acquisitions. We serve as counsel to boards and special committees and advise issuers and underwriters in connection with initial public offerings (IPOs) and follow-on offerings.
Our finance lawyers have experience across all segments of the debt capital markets. Among our clients are traditional and specialty lenders, hedge funds, private equity and loan funds, collateral managers, trust companies, governmental bodies and agencies, and borrowers. We have advised clients in connection with billions of dollars in leveraged finance and asset-based lending transactions, syndicated capital markets transactions with cross-border and multicurrency components, first-of-kind structured finance transactions involving traditional and esoteric asset classes; infrastructure projects, and complex financings related to a range of other project types.
With more than 130 attorneys, Winston’s intellectual property practice is one of the most active and highly regarded in the country. In 2022, our IP litigation practice was ranked in the first tier nationally by U.S. News & World Report in its “Best Law Firms” survey, and Chambers USA recognized our IP practice in its national rankings.
What is striking about our practice is that we are at the cutting edge of not just the high-tech, biotech, pharmaceutical, or new media industries, and not just patent litigation, ITC Section 337 investigations, copyright, trademark, privacy, and domain names, but all of the above.
A small sampling of our notable achievements include: winning a $1 billion jury verdict, the fifth-largest patent verdict of all time; obtaining a precedential patent decision for the generics industry, ruling a new chemical compound invalid as obvious; recovering $24.5 million in an international trade secrets case; obtaining a favorable settlement in a massive ITC investigation involving two of the world’s largest semiconductor companies; and achieving a landmark appellate ruling that affirmed that the safe harbor provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) are, in fact, safe for those distribution sources that make good faith efforts to avoid infringement.
Winston & Strawn’s Labor & Employment and Employee Benefits & Executive Compensation (EBEC) Departments have long been considered among the nation’s premier practices, as evidenced by the regular recognitions we receive on both regional and national levels.
With more than 75 years of experience and nearly 60 attorneys firmwide, our Labor & Employment Practice is one of the largest and most experienced practices among the country’s multi-disciplined law firms. The group represents employers of all types and sizes—ranging from the Fortune 100 to privately held startups, including businesses both foreign and domestic. We also serve as national, regional, or preferred counsel to many major employers. Our attorneys are known for effective and successful representation, covering a broad range of hard-hitting labor and employment law issues, including major class and collective actions, with an emphasis on wage and hour and ERISA litigation. We also have one of the most experienced and long standing traditional labor practices, which includes handling the full range of high-profile and complex labor disputes. In addition, we regularly handle single plaintiff employment litigation, as well as matters involving trade secrets, unfair competition, and noncompete issues; important counseling and compliance advice; and other day-to-day employment issues.
Our EBEC attorneys focus on a wide range of matters relating to employee benefits and executive compensation plans and arrangements. We advise corporations, institutions, boards of directors, private equity firms, and executives on all legal, design, drafting, negotiation, and compliance aspects of executive compensation matters. We also advise corporations, firms, organizations, fiduciaries, executives, administrators, governmental entities, and financial institutions on innovative and traditional employee retirement and health and welfare benefits programs. In addition, we advise clients on executive compensation disclosure matters, including in connection with initial public offerings, proxy filings, and other periodic reporting obligations and Section 16 filings. Our level of experience and more than 50 years of involvement in the EBEC field have given our attorneys a deep understanding of the evolution of benefits law and the market for executive compensation.
In connection with corporate restructurings, we advise on pension, retiree medical, and other significant executive compensation and employee benefit liabilities. In addition, we negotiate and design management arrangements during and after bankruptcy, including key employee incentive plans (KEIPs) and management incentive plans (MIPs).
Trial skills matter—even in a world where few disputes ever see the inside of a courtroom. Winston & Strawn has built a reputation as a trial lawyers’ firm. Our litigation lawyers are fully prepared to defend our clients’ interests in court, both in the United States and around the world. From compliance counseling to mediation, settlement negotiation, motion practice, trial, and appeal, Winston offers a full-service litigation law firm capable of meeting our clients’ business and legal objectives, whatever they may be.
Our litigators are some of the most seasoned in the industry, bringing extensive courtroom experience to every matter our firm handles. This experience enables us to spot outcome-determinative legal issues earlier so we can prepare compelling arguments that support our clients’ positions. What’s more, our long history of taking cases to trial – and winning – gives our clients tremendous settlement leverage with their adversaries, as well as confidence in a successful outcome if and when they go to trial. Winston’s global team of more than 500 litigators on three continents approaches every case with strategic focus, unrelenting advocacy, and intensive preparation. That’s why some of the world’s largest companies and financial institutions have asked us to represent them in their most difficult litigation matters. These clients include: Abbott Laboratories; Cisco Systems, Inc.; Ernst & Young LLP; Goldman, Sachs & Co.; Google Inc.; JPMorgan Chase & Co.; McDonald’s Corporation; Microsoft Corporation; the NFL Players’ Association; and Panasonic Corporation.
The firm’s litigation prowess extends even beyond the courtroom. Winston’s world-class international arbitration practice assists clients with large-value, complex, and high-profile commercial and investment-based disputes in virtually every major arbitration center.
Winston & Strawn real estate attorneys offer institutional knowledge and experience across an extensive array of property transactions. Collaborating with our corporate, tax, environmental, and litigation practices, we are able to assist purchasers, sellers, developers, borrowers, and lenders in the acquisition, financing, sale, development, and leasing of commercial, industrial, and multifamily properties. In addition, our team represents clients in connection with capital markets transactions including the structuring, financing, and securitization of mortgage loans and other real property-related assets. Our vast client base includes major U.S. and international corporations, financial institutions, real estate funds, insurance companies, and other high-level real estate market participants.
Our real estate finance practice focuses on the representation of financial institutions in a full range of lending products, including traditional finance transactions; transactions structured for securitization; and transactions for which we act as counsel to issuers, underwriters, sponsors, and other market participants in the securitization process.
We have extensive experience representing clients involved in real estate-related bankruptcy, workout, and restructuring matters for projects of all types. We have been involved in a substantial number of workouts at the property and entity levels, bankruptcies, and foreclosures, and have counseled clients in restructurings affecting a wide variety of asset types.
We represent a range of investors and owners of real estate in buying, owning, managing and selling real estate assets. In addition to handling routine acquisition and sale matters, we have developed and refined unique acquisition, development, financing, partnership, joint venture and other equity participation structures for institutional clients.
Our attorneys are also experienced in planning and implementing a variety of organizational and real estate ownership structures used for REIT formations and transactions. We regularly advise lenders, funds, investors, and buyers on financing strategies at each stage of the investment cycle, including in connection with creating, purchasing, selling, and securitizing interests in mortgage loans and mezzanine loans.
Insurance plays an essential role in risk mitigation. As risks evolve, questions often arise concerning the scope of insurance coverage and the interpretation and application of policy provisions. Those questions sometimes turn contentious and can result in significant disputes between insurers and policyholders.
Winston & Strawn’s Insurance Practice stands alone in its ability to provide insurance companies with best-in-class advice and, if need be, litigation defense in high-stakes coverage disputes. We have successfully defended lawsuits and disputes involving claims for billions of dollars, including those arising from major catastrophes. For example, in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, we prevailed at summary judgment against a sophisticated insured seeking over $1.4 billion—nearly fifty times the amount to which it was entitled under its insurance policy—and had that judgment affirmed by the Second Circuit. In another case, also arising from Hurricane Sandy, we again won summary judgment against a major real estate developer on a claim worth hundreds of millions of dollars. We also obtained dismissals with prejudice in numerous jurisdictions in a series of putative class actions relating to the marketing and sale of travel insurance. Currently, we are defending dozens of lawsuits involving claims to business interruption coverage stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic, and we have secured dismissals with prejudice in several of those matters to date. We have achieved excellent outcomes for our clients in matters involving a wide variety of insurance policies and claims, including property and casualty, cybersecurity, travel, long-term care, and annuities, among others. Moreover, we have experience in emerging issues and industries, such as blockchain technology and artificial intelligence, both of which present insurers with a unique and complicated set of risks and opportunities.
Winston & Strawn’s Tax Practice also has a team of attorneys who specialize in advising domestic and multinational insurance companies, as well as representing them in tax disputes at the federal and state levels. The experience of our insurance tax attorneys extends to all stages of the controversy lifecycle, including audit, appeals, and litigation, at both the state and federal levels, and the planning lifecycle, including acquisitions, restructurings, and product tax matters.
The capabilities of our Insurance Practice are reflected in the breadth, size, and complexity of the cases we handle. Our clients benefit from our proactive counseling, our ability to anticipate, develop, and craft defenses to counter novel legal theories, and our tactical and strategic skill and tenacity in litigation and negotiations.
