 | |
| Headquarters | Washington, D.C. andBoston, Massachusetts |
|---|---|
| No. of offices | 12 |
| No. of attorneys | 1,201 (2025) |
| No. of employees | 2,363 (2025) |
| Major practice areas | General Practice |
| Key people | Anjan Sahni (Managing Partner)[1] |
| Revenue | US$1.60 billion (2024) |
| Profit per equity partner | US$3.27 million (2024)[2] |
| Date founded | Boston, Massachusetts (1918) Washington, D.C. (1962) |
| Founder | Multiple |
| Company type | Limited liability partnership |
| Website | wilmerhale |
Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP, also known asWilmerHale, is an Americanmultinational law firm with offices in the United States and Europe. Co-headquartered inWashington, D.C., andBoston, it was formed in 2004 through themerger of the Boston-based firm Hale and Dorr and the D.C.-based firm Wilmer Cutler & Pickering. It employs more than 1,000 attorneys worldwide.[3]
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 admitGeorge W. Wightman andReginald Heber Smith.[4] Smith, author of the seminal workJustice and the Poor and a pioneer in the Americanlegal aid movement, joined the firm in 1919 and served as managing partner for thirty years. Hale and Dorr gained national recognition in 1954 when partnerJoseph Welch, assisted by associateJames St. Clair and John Kimball Jr., represented theU.S. Army on apro bono basis during the historicArmy-McCarthy hearings. In 1974,James D. St. Clair represented PresidentRichard Nixon before theSupreme Court of the United States inUnited States v. Nixon. In 1988, partner Paul Brountas chaired the presidential campaign of Massachusetts GovernorMichael Dukakis, and in 1990, senior partnerWilliam Weld was elected governor. The firm has had a long relationship with nearbyHarvard Law School, home of the WilmerHale Legal Services Center.[5]
Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering was founded in Washington in 1962 by formerCravath attorneysLloyd Cutler andJohn Pickering, along with a senior lawyer, Richard H. Wilmer. Cutler, who later served asWhite House Counsel to PresidentsJimmy Carter andBill Clinton, founded theLawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law in 1962 and served on its executive committee until 1987.[6]
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 duringapartheid. From 1981 to 1993, partnerC. Boyden Gray, a prominent member of The Federalist Society, left the firm to serve as White House Counsel to Vice President and PresidentGeorge H. W. Bush. In 2003, partnerJamie Gorelick began serving as a member of the9/11 Commission.[7]
The two firms merged to form Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr in 2004, with headquarters now in both Boston and Washington.[3]
In 2010, the law firm relocated its administrative support base to a new campus inDayton, Ohio, as it sought to streamline internal business operations across its many offices.[8] 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.[9]
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.[10]
On March 27, 2025, PresidentDonald Trump signed anexecutive ordertaking action against the firm over its ties toRobert 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.[11][12] The following day a lawsuit was filed byPaul Clement of Clement & Murphy seeking to bar the executive order.[13] Later that day, U.S. District JudgeRichard 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.[14] On May 27, 2025, Judge Leon struck down the executive order, calling the order “unconstitutional.”[15]
According to one study examining political donations by largewhite shoe firms, WilmerHale was ranked as the most liberal out of the top twenty prestigious law firms in the nation.[16]
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,[17] and noted that the firm "has played a leading role in reimagining what 'Big Law' can be."[18]
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.[19]
The firm is also well known for its litigation and trial expertise. InThe American Lawyer's 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.[20]
In the late 1980s, Hale and Dorr partner Jerome Facher representedBeatrice Foods in a suit by eight families fromWoburn,Massachusetts who claimed that Beatrice, along withW.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 bookA Civil Action, byJonathan Harr, and in amovie of the same name starringRobert Duvall as Facher andJohn Travolta as plaintiffs' lawyer Jan Schlichtmann.[21] 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.
In the wake of news articles raising concerns about transactions betweenEnron and itsCFO,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.[22]
Similarly, afterWorldCom'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.[23]
WilmerHale counseledApple 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 accusedSamsung of infringing numerous design and utility patents related to the iPhone.[24]
In 2021, WilmerHale representedPerkinElmer in its acquisition of life sciences companyBioLegend 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."[24]
In 1986, Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering represented corporate raiderIvan Boesky in high-profileDepartment of Justice andSEC proceedings, as well as multiple class actions based on his participation in insider trading violations.
Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering representedSwiss banks accused of profiting from the Holocaust in their settlement negotiations with plaintiffs. The firm also representedSiemens AG,Krupp AG, and other German companies accused of exploiting forced laborers during the Nazi era.[25]
Since 2005, WilmerHale has represented SenatorWilliam Frist in regard to an SECinsider trading investigation.[26]
WilmerHale was hired to representPepsiCo 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 aWall Street Journal reporter as part of an internal communication to other attorneys working on the matter, which made several details of the investigation public.[27]
In early December 2022Caroline Ellison, former CEO ofAlameda Research, hiredStephanie Avakian as her lead attorney.[28]
WilmerHale was the external law firm hired byOpenAI to conduct a review and investigation into the events surrounding theNovember 2023 removal and subsequent reinstatement of CEO Sam Altman.[29]
In July 2025, theFinancial Times reported thatBoston 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".[30]
Both Hale and Dorr and Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering have a long history of involvement inpro bono work.
WilmerHale lawyers dedicated pro bono hours to addressing issues of systemic racial injustice following the murder of George Floyd in 2020.[31]
Attorneys at the firm also challenged the legality of Georgia's voting maps, claiming that the revised maps diluted Black voting strength.[32]
A team of WilmerHale attorneys represents the "Algerian Six", a group of men who fell under suspicion of planning to attack the US embassy inBosnia and who are now held in theGuantanamo Bay detainment camp.[33]
In 2006, attorneyMelissa Hoffer, then part of the team with WilmerHale, delivered a speech inCaen, France, critical of U.S. detainee policy.[34] Other WilmerHale lawyers participating in the case include Stephen Oleskey[35] and Rob Kirsch.[33]
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 donepro bono or might actually receive funding from shadowy sources.[36] In aWall Street Journal editorial criticizing Stimson, Harvard Law School professor (and formerUnited States Solicitor General under President Reagan)Charles Fried wrote:
It is no surprise that firms like WilmerHale (which represents bothBig Pharma and Tobacco Free Kids),Covington & Burling (which represents both Big Tobacco and Guantanamo detainees), and the other firms on Mr. Stimson's hit list, are among the most sought-after by law school graduates, and retain the loyalty and enthusiasm of their partners. They offer their lawyers the profession at its best and help assure that the rule of law is not just a slogan but a satisfying way of life.[37]
In December 2007,Seth Waxman made the oral argument to the Supreme Court inBoumediene v. Bush which upheld habeas corpus rights for detainees at Guantanamo Bay.[38]
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