WilmerHale

History

Hale and Dorr, 1918–2004

Hale and Dorr was founded in Boston in 1918 by Richard Hale, Dudley Huntington Dorr, Frank Grinnell, Roger Swaim, and John Maguire. On January 1, 1919, the partnership was reconstituted to admit George W. Wightman and Reginald Heber Smith. Smith, author of the seminal work Justice and the Poor and a pioneer in the American legal aid movement, joined the firm in 1919 and served as managing partner for thirty years. Hale and Dorr gained national recognition in 1954 when partner Joseph Welch, assisted by associate James St. Clair and John Kimball Jr., represented the U.S. Army on a pro bono basis during the historic Army-McCarthy hearings. In 1974, James D. St. Clair represented President Richard Nixon before the Supreme Court of the United States in United States v. Nixon. In 1988, partner Paul Brountas chaired the presidential campaign of Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis, and in 1990, senior partner William Weld was elected governor. The firm has had a long relationship with nearby Harvard Law School, home of the WilmerHale Legal Services Center.

Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering, 1962–2004

Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering was founded in Washington in 1962 by former Cravath attorneys Lloyd Cutler and John Pickering, along with a senior lawyer, Richard H. Wilmer. Cutler, who later served as White House Counsel to Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, founded the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law in 1962 and served on its executive committee until 1987.

In the 1980s, Cutler led the founding of the Southern Africa Legal Services and Legal Education Project, to aid South African lawyers who fought to implement the rule of law during apartheid. From 1981 to 1993, partner C. Boyden Gray, a prominent member of The Federalist Society, left the firm to serve as White House Counsel to Vice President and President George H. W. Bush. In 2003, partner Jamie Gorelick began serving as a member of the 9/11 Commission.

Combined firm, since 2004

The two firms merged to form Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr in 2004, with headquarters now in both Boston and Washington.

In 2010, the law firm relocated its administrative support base to a new campus in Dayton, Ohio, as it sought to streamline internal business operations across its many offices. The office houses more than 200 employees from existing WilmerHale offices and new employees from the Dayton area. Individuals in the Business Services Center include administrative support staff, bringing together services such as finance, human resources, information technology services, operations, document review and management, and practice management, which will provide improved efficiencies for administrative teams and the firm, and reduce significant operational expenses.

In June 2023, the firm announced that former federal prosecutor Anjan Sahni would replace the co-managing partners Robert Novick and Susan Murley at the beginning of next year.

Targeting by the second Trump administration

On March 27, 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order taking action against the firm over its ties to Robert Mueller, former special counsel, who led a probe into Trump's 2016 campaign and its alleged ties with Russian state officials. The executive order directs federal agencies to end contracts with WilmerHale's clients, revokes their lawyers' security clearances and restricts their access to certain government buildings. The following day a lawsuit was filed by Paul Clement of Clement & Murphy seeking to bar the executive order. Later that day, U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon issued a temporary restraining order blocking a portion of the order, but did not block the provision ending WilmerHale’s lawyers' security clearances. On May 27, 2025, Judge Leon struck down the executive order, calling the order “unconstitutional.”

Reputation

According to one study examining political donations by large white shoe firms, WilmerHale was ranked as the most liberal out of the top twenty prestigious law firms in the nation.

The Washington Post ranked WilmerHale as the No. 1 Top Workplace in DC in 2019, and the firm has earned a Top Workplace for eight consecutive years, and noted that the firm "has played a leading role in reimagining what 'Big Law' can be."

The American Lawyer named WilmerHale Law Firm of the Year in 2021 and noted that for 17 years, the law firm has earned a spot on its A-List, which takes into consideration not just revenues, but pro bono work, diversity, and attorney satisfaction.

The firm is also well known for its litigation and trial expertise. In The American Lawyer biennial Litigation Department of the Year contest honoring law firms considered the "absolute best in the industry when it comes to litigation prowess", they highlighted that the firm has a strong reputation in the most important practice areas such as public policy and legislative affairs, regulation, antitrust, intellectual property and international trade and that WilmerHale is home to some of the most well-known appellate and Supreme Court litigators in the country.

Clients

''A Civil Action''

In the late 1980s, Hale and Dorr partner Jerome Facher represented Beatrice Foods in a suit by eight families from Woburn, Massachusetts who claimed that Beatrice, along with W.R. Grace, had polluted the town's water supply, resulting in an elevated number of leukemia cases and immune-system disorders. The case was memorialized in the book A Civil Action, by Jonathan Harr, and in a movie of the same name starring Robert Duvall as Facher and John Travolta as plaintiffs' lawyer Jan Schlichtmann. Upon further discovery, the EPA took the case on and W.R. Grace was successfully indicted for making false statements. Both W. R. Grace and Beatrice Foods paid a total $64.9 million to clean up the contaminated sites in Woburn.

Enron and WorldCom reports

In the wake of news articles raising concerns about transactions between Enron and its CFO, Andy Fastow, lawyers from Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering represented a special investigative committee of Enron's board of directors in an internal investigation into those transactions. The resulting report, known as the "Powers Report," laid out the facts that have been the predicate for much of the public discussion of Enron since that time.

Similarly, after WorldCom's announcement that it would have to restate financial statements, the firm represented a special investigative committee of WorldCom's board of directors in performing an internal investigation into the accounting irregularities. The investigation resulted in a widely covered written report that detailed a variety of accounting issues as well as the role of management and the board of directors.

''Apple Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. et al''

WilmerHale counseled Apple Inc. in its hotly contested smartphone patent dispute with Samsung Electronics Co. The two parties reached a settlement in 2018 after a seven-year-long battle that began when Apple accused Samsung of infringing numerous design and utility patents related to the iPhone.

PerkinElmer's acquisition of BioLegend

In 2021, WilmerHale represented PerkinElmer in its acquisition of life sciences company BioLegend for $5.25 billion, the largest acquisition to date for PerkinElmer. President and CEO of PerkinElmer Prahlad Singh said the deal will "push science and discovery forward."

Other notable and controversial clients

In 1986, Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering represented corporate raider Ivan Boesky in high-profile Department of Justice and SEC proceedings, as well as multiple class actions based on his participation in insider trading violations.

Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering represented Swiss banks accused of profiting from the Holocaust in their settlement negotiations with plaintiffs. The firm also represented Siemens AG, Krupp AG, and other German companies accused of exploiting forced laborers during the Nazi era.

Since 2005, WilmerHale has represented Senator William Frist in regard to an SEC insider trading investigation.

WilmerHale was hired to represent PepsiCo in the SEC investigation related to the departure of PepsiCo general counsel Maura Smith. In the course of this representation, a WilmerHale attorney inadvertently e-mailed a confidential legal memorandum to a Wall Street Journal reporter as part of an internal communication to other attorneys working on the matter, which made several details of the investigation public.

In early December 2022 Caroline Ellison, former CEO of Alameda Research, hired Stephanie Avakian as her lead attorney.

WilmerHale was the external law firm hired by OpenAI to conduct a review and investigation into the events surrounding the November 2023 removal and subsequent reinstatement of CEO Sam Altman.

In July 2025, the Financial Times reported that Boston Consulting Group (BCG) had hired WilmerHale to help in an internal investigation on "process failures", referring to the role of the "BCG modelled plan to 'relocate' Palestinians from Gaza".

''Pro bono''

Both Hale and Dorr and Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering have a long history of involvement in pro bono work.

WilmerHale lawyers dedicated pro bono hours to addressing issues of systemic racial injustice following the murder of George Floyd in 2020.

Attorneys at the firm also challenged the legality of Georgia's voting maps, claiming that the revised maps diluted Black voting strength.

Guantanamo controversy

Main article: Guantanamo Bay attorneys

A team of WilmerHale attorneys represents the "Algerian Six", a group of men who fell under suspicion of planning to attack the US embassy in Bosnia and who are now held in the Guantanamo Bay detainment camp.

In 2006, attorney Melissa Hoffer, then part of the team with WilmerHale, delivered a speech in Caen, France, critical of U.S. detainee policy. Other WilmerHale lawyers participating in the case include Stephen Oleskey and Rob Kirsch.

In January 2007, Cully Stimson, deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, criticized WilmerHale and other major law firms for representing "the very terrorists who hit their bottom line back in 2001," and questioned whether such work was really being done pro bono or might actually receive funding from shadowy sources. In a Wall Street Journal editorial criticizing Stimson, Harvard Law School professor (and former United States Solicitor General under President Reagan) Charles Fried wrote:

In December 2007, Seth Waxman made the oral argument to the Supreme Court in Boumediene v. Bush which upheld habeas corpus rights for detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

Notable alumni

• Charlene Barshefsky, retired partner; former United States Trade Representative
• Maura Healey, former partner, former Attorney General of Massachusetts and current Governor of Massachusetts
• Alejandro Mayorkas, retired partner, former United States Secretary of Homeland Security
• Robert Mueller, retired partner; former FBI director and special counsel to the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election
• Ken Salazar, senior counsel; former Secretary of the Interior, former U.S. Ambassador to Mexico

References

References

1. WilmerHale. (June 15, 2023). "WilmerHale Elects Anjan Sahni as Managing Partner".
2. Abigail Adcox. (March 6, 2025). "Wilmer's Revenue Rose Almost 7%, Passing $1.6B".
3. Jonathan D. Glater. (April 20, 2004). "2 Law Firms Plan to Merge, Creating One of Global Size". New York Times.
4. (1958). "Eminent Law Firms of the United States". C.W. Taylor.
5. "WilmerHale Legal Services Center". Harvard Law School.
6. "History". Lawyer's Committee for Civil Rights.
7. 9/11 Commission. "Jamie S. Gorelick Commissioner".
8. Amanda Becker. (May 3, 2010). "WilmerHale moving support staff to Ohio". The Washington Post.
9. "Law firm looks to future in Miami Twp.".
10. WilmerHale. (June 15, 2023). "WilmerHale Elects Anjan Sahni as Managing Partner".
11. (2025-03-27). "Addressing Risks From WilmerHale".
12. (March 28, 2025). "Trump targets another law firm over its ties to Robert Mueller". [[The Guardian]].
13. (2025-03-28). "WilmerHale Fights Trump With Conservative Star Paul Clement (1)".
14. "Judges Block Trump's Jenner & Block, WilmerHale Orders - Law360".
15. "Trump's WilmerHale Order Struck Down In Forceful Decision - Law360".
16. "How are Quinn Emmanuel and Hillary Clinton Alike". biglawbusiness.com.
17. "Washington Post announces 2021 top workplaces in the Washington area". The Washington Post.
18. "Top Workplaces 2019". The Washington Post.
19. "How Wilmer built a winner with help from the entire firm community".
20. "For Wilmer's Litigation Department, Success is a Complete Team Effort".
21. "A Civil Action".
22. (February 1, 2002). "Report of Investigation by the Special Investigative Committee of the Board of Directors of Enron Corp.".
23. Larry Schlesinger. (June 10, 2003). "WorldCom report: Sullivan masterminded fraud". Accountancy Age.
24. "3 Firms Sculpt PerkinElmer's $5.25B Buy Of Life Sciences Co".
25. Michael J. Bazyler. (Fall 2004). "Suing Hitler's Willing Business Partners: American Justice and Holocaust Morality". Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.
26. (October 9, 2005). "The Senate: Doubting a Trust".
27. (2017-09-27). "SEC Probes Departure of PepsiCo's Former Top Lawyer". Wall Street Journal.
28. (10 December 2022). "Caroline Ellison Hires SEC's Former Top Crypto Cop for FTX probe". Bloomberg.
29. (March 8, 2024). "OpenAI's Sam Altman Returns to Board After Probe Clears Him". Bloomberg News.
30. Foley, Stephen. (2025-07-04). "BCG modelled plan to 'relocate' Palestinians from Gaza". Financial Times.
31. (2022-12-06). "Lawyers use pro bono hours to step up fight for racial justice". Financial Times.
32. (March 31, 2022). "They've Got Next: White Collar Fresh Face Robert Boone".
33. Farah Stockman. (July 2, 2008). "Lawyers make huge pro bono effort for Guantanamo detainees".
34. Melissa Hoffer. "Speech".
35. (January 17, 2007). "Top Pentagon Official Calls for Boycott of Law Firms Representing Guantanamo Prisoners". Democracy Now!.
36. [https://blogs.wsj.com/law/2007/01/12/bush-lawyer-blasts-corporate-law-firms-for-representing-detainees/ "Bush Lawyer Blasts Law Firms For Representing Detainees"] {{Webarchive. link. (2017-06-27 post by Peter Lattman on Law Blog ''[Wall Street Journal]'' on the cases, trends and personalities of interest to the business community, January 12, 2007)
37. [https://blogs.wsj.com/law/2007/01/16/stimson-under-fire/ "Stimson Under Fire"] {{Webarchive. link. (2017-06-27 post by Peter Lattman on Law Blog ''[Wall Street Journal]'' on the cases, trends and personalities of interest to the business community, January 16, 2007)
38. (December 5, 2007). "Boumediene v. Bush, 12/5/07, No. 06-1195".
39. Ailworth, Erin. (February 19, 2012). "Why globalization gets a bad rap". The Boston Globe.
40. Shao, Yiqing. (2015-04-28). "Boston's 50 Most Powerful People: Maura Healey".
41. "Can Maura Healey work with the business community? - The Boston Globe".
42. Blitzer, Jonathan. (2024-02-17). "The Trials of Alejandro Mayorkas".
43. Noah Weiland. (October 1, 2019). "Robert Mueller Rejoins Law Firm to Conduct Corporate Investigations".
44. (2025-03-27). "Trump targets Robert Mueller's former law firm in latest legal attack".
45. Scarcella, Mike. (6 July 2021). "U.S. ambassador pick for Mexico discloses WilmerHale pay".
46. (2013-06-05). "Colorado's Ken Salazar joins top law firm, will open a Denver office".
47. Fennell, Julia. (11 August 2021). "Former Sen. Ken Salazar of Colorado confirmed as ambassador to Mexico".