Chicago Office

Our Employee Benefits Practice provides risk transfer, Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP), and consulting services to many financial institutions and privately held companies. Our ESOP Practice is among the nation's largest dedicated to this area. For commercial lenders looking to provide creative solutions to their customers’ financing and business needs, ESOPs have much to offer. Tax incentives make ESOP loans advantageous by enhancing borrowers’ cash flow as compared with traditional corporate loans. Our attorneys focus on counseling lenders on the unique issues raised by ESOP lending and in negotiating and documenting ESOP loans. Through a combination of our ESOP and finance knowledge, we are able to provide high-caliber representation to lenders engaged in ESOP transactions, ranging from simple working-capital revolvers to complex management buyouts or private equity transactions.

Our Labor and Employment Practice represents national and regional clients in discrimination, employee benefits, trade secret, Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), wage and hour, and union/company litigation and counseling matters. Our team is particularly active in assisting companies with matters related to workforce change, such as reductions in force, as well as high-stakes ERISA litigation, including cases involving retiree health benefits and victories in post-Enron stock-drop cases. Our team defends employers around the country in other complex litigation, including significant wage and hour collective actions and employment discrimination class actions brought by private counsel, as well as pattern and practice claims brought by the government. We cover employment counseling, employee benefits litigation, individual employment litigation and arbitration, labor-management relations and labor disputes, and OFCCP/affirmative action plans.

Our Chicago litigators work in concert with hundreds of Morgan Lewis attorneys in our worldwide Litigation Practice to offer clients advice in and out of the courtroom on a wide range of litigation matters. For decades, we have defended the nation's leading companies in high-stakes product liability and toxic and mass tort litigation. We were among the original participants in asbestos property damage litigation, which was critical in developing current class action case law. We represent clients in insurance recovery, environmental, product liability, property damage, and business interruption litigation. We also represent clients in cases involving allegations of financial fraud, as well as in securities regulatory and commercial litigation matters. We defend clients in serial litigation, multiplaintiff claims, and other cases that may involve a relatively small number of plaintiffs but pose significant risks for the client.

The Investment Management Practice of Morgan Lewis provides the full spectrum of legal services to one of the world’s most diverse and fastest-growing industries. Our worldwide practice has clients located throughout the United States and abroad. We represent a broad range of financial services entities, including investment companies, investment advisers, broker-dealers, venture capital and hedge funds, banks and trust companies, insurance companies, pension plans, pension consultants, transfer agents, and other industry participants. Attorneys in our Chicago office focus on serving as counsel to domestic and foreign exchanges and clearing organizations, banks, investment managers, brokerage firms, and end-users in connection with exchange-traded and over-the-counter derivative instruments. In addition, we represent foreign exchanges and clearing houses in their U.S. offerings of futures and equity options products and derivatives clearing activities.

Clients, particularly those in the life sciences, turn to our firm's Chicago office for assistance in intellectual property matters. Our team features attorneys with advanced academic degrees in such disciplines as microbiology, molecular biology and biochemistry, and cell biology. We focus on such matters as the acquisition and enforcement of intellectual property rights, the design and implementation of global intellectual property matters, and the valuation of patent portfolios. We also advise clients regarding freedom-to-operate opinions, patent prosecution, and patent counseling. The leader of our Chicago IP team has represented clients before various courts and administrative agencies and in private mediation and arbitration.

Our corporate team, part of our Business and Finance Practice, represents major corporations, including Fortune 500 companies, both domestically and internationally. We assist our clients in mergers and acquisitions, public and private financings, restructurings, spin-offs, joint ventures and partnerships, securities regulations, private equity and venture capital transactions, and general corporate and securities counseling.