Dear Morgan Lewis Alumni,

All of us at Morgan Lewis extend our warmest holiday wishes to you, your colleagues, and your loved ones as we celebrate the conclusion of another exciting and eventful year.

This past year, Morgan Lewis experienced remarkable expansion and positive change. Early in 2015—just months after welcoming more than 700 lawyers from Bingham McCutchen—we expanded into Singapore with the creation of Morgan Lewis Stamford, welcoming approximately 80 lawyers from Singapore’s Stamford Law Corporation. This innovative, first-of-its-kind combination established our firm as a business transaction, litigation, and arbitration powerhouse in Asia, and, together with other key additions in Europe, the Middle East, and the United States, further solidified Morgan Lewis as a global legal leader.

Our clients and the broader market have reacted enthusiastically to our enhanced firm and the multiplying effect of our broadened global reach. Throughout the year, we received numerous recognitions. We now have more than 350 lawyers listed in the 2015 Chambers & Partners publications, and we are pleased to have 89 practice areas and 249 lawyers recommended across the Legal 500’s practice guides. Law360 ranked ours as the largest law firm in the United States. Acritas’ respected Global Elite Law Firm Brand index ranked Morgan Lewis among the top 20 global legal brands, meaning that we are never far from the minds of senior corporate decision makers searching for legal services.

Another significant honor came from The American Lawyer, which placed Morgan Lewis among its four grand prize winners in the Global Legal Awards. We also received the prestigious Gold Standard Certification by Women in Law Empowerment Forum, recognizing our success in elevating women into the firm’s leadership ranks.

Keeping in step with the explosive growth of our firm, we also dramatically re-conceptualized how we present ourselves to the world with the launch of a completely new morganlewis.com. Utilizing a combination of technology, graphics, and content, our website is now far more robust, user-friendly, and intuitive and strongly conveys our core message that we are “always on.” We have reinforced this simple but powerful perception via our comprehensively updated marketing and communications materials to deliver a unified firm message.

Our expansion has not changed in any respect our core commitments to our clients, the profession, and our local communities. During this year’s extremely successful Pro Bono and Community Service Week, our personnel participated in more than 130 different pro bono and community service events, many of which focused on the theme of hunger prevention. More than 2,000 lawyers and staff members together took part in at least one event.

In FY2015, 64% of our lawyers billed more than 20 hours to pro bono matters, totaling more than 98,000 hours, a dramatic increase from the 75,000 hours billed in FY2014. I was honored to accept on behalf of the firm the distinguished Law Firm Pro Bono Award from Public Counsel, a leading national pro bono law firm. We have often worked alongside the organization, including taking the lead in a seminal case that benefitted more than 100,000 individuals and produced significant reforms in Los Angeles County’s program to aid its most vulnerable residents.

We are lucky to spend a great deal of our time with our alumni, many of whom are among our valued clients, and we thank you very sincerely for your support and your confidence in Morgan Lewis. We welcome all of you who are new to the Morgan Lewis alumni group, including those who have inherited Morgan Lewis through our combinations with Bingham McCutchen or Stamford; we are proud to count you as part of our community. We invite you to keep up with us by visiting our alumni page or connecting with our alumni group on LinkedIn.

We remain deeply grateful for our firm’s successes and for the bright future they signify for our clients and all of us who call this our professional home. We hope to hear from you again soon.
 
With warmest regards,

Jami Wintz McKeon
Chair of the Firm