K&L Gates

The firm: K&L Gates is a global law firm with lawyers located across five continents — and so much more. The firm comprises a fully integrated network of lawyers and legal professionals who believe that clients need more than technical legal skills; they need insightful and practical advice on the diverse issues that affect their businesses, delivered with unparalleled client service. K&L Gates’ combination of practice strength, global platform, and unwavering commitment to client service is its true differentiator in the legal services marketplace. The firm takes a client-first approach to delivering legal solutions, thinking beyond the firm’s internal structure and constantly examining the broader industry, regulatory, and economic issues. Lawyers identify potential issues in advance based on deep industry knowledge and alert clients to what they may face in the future. K&L Gates represents a broad array of clients in every major industry, including technology, manufacturing, energy, transportation, telecommunications, financial services, and life sciences. Beyond unsurpassed service and universal experience, K&L Gates has one of the largest contingents of lawyers and offices across the United States of any law firm, with 25 offices nationwide. The firm’s extensive network includes approximately 300 lawyers in Europe’s largest economies and is one of the largest fully integrated U.S. law firms in the Asia Pacific region, with approximately 400 legal professionals.

Main areas of practice
Corporate and transactional: K&L Gates’ corporate and transactional practice is global, integrated, and one of the most substantial in the legal industry, delivering full-service corporate counsel to facilitate the structuring, financing, and successful completion of domestic, international, and cross-border transactions — including mergers and acquisitions, divestitures, joint ventures, recapitalizations, and public and private debt and equity offerings — across multiple industries. It is the firm of choice for clients in the mid-market on both sides of transactions, representing an array of Global 500, Fortune 100, and FTSE 100 corporations, privately held and venture-backed companies, partnerships, private equity firms, and other investment funds, management groups, and entrepreneurs.

Energy, infrastructure, and resources: K&L Gates leverages experience from a wide variety of legal disciplines to serve clients in the global energy, renewables, infrastructure, and resources sectors, including climate change and carbon finance. The firm advises on the financing, development, permitting, and construction needed to build large infrastructure; the operational issues of power generation and resource extraction activities; joint ventures; capital markets transactions and mergers and acquisitions of infrastructure and resource companies; and litigation and arbitration related to business activities of clients in this industry.

Finance: Encompassing the core practice groups of banking and asset finance, debt capital markets, and restructuring and insolvency — and with lawyers located in key financial centers around the world — K&L Gates’ finance practice is well positioned to assist lenders and borrowers in achieving their financing objectives, mitigating transaction risks, and complying with regulations. Areas of practice include structured finance; securitizations; derivatives; structured products; real estate finance; marketplace lending; municipal finance; and mezzanine, leveraged, and acquisition finance.

Financial services: The firm represents a broad cross-section of clients, including both financial service providers, such as broker-dealers, investment advisers, banks and trust companies, and insurance companies, as well as investment vehicles and other institutional investors, such as open- and closed-end registered investment companies (and their independent directors), ETFs, hedge funds (onshore and offshore), retirement plans (ERISA and governmental plans), and collective investment funds sponsored by banks and trust companies. The firm also has a diverse national and international bankruptcy/insolvency practice that serves a broad range of clients on both the debtor and creditor side.

Intellectual property: K&L Gates advises prominent global companies, helping to develop and protect their intellectual property assets worldwide and handling complex, high-stakes litigation in 50 states and the District of Columbia. More than 200 lawyers and 100 USPTO-registered professionals devote their practices to protecting and commercializing intellectual property assets in the form of patents, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets. Patent lawyers, many with PhDs, handle cases involving biotechnology innovations, hospital equipment, medical devices, computer networking equipment, and sports equipment, among others.

Labor, employment and workplace safety: Lawyers in the labor, employment and workplace safety (LEWS) practice advise domestic and international clients on a wide array of employment matters, including personnel management and statutory compliance, employment litigation defense, business transactions, immigration issues, and wage and hour disputes, among others. K&L Gates’ full-service Global Employer Solutions® offering draws on the experience of its LEWS team, as well as its employee benefits, executive compensation, taxation, immigration, and investigations teams, to help global clients navigate the full spectrum of workplace risk.

Litigation and dispute resolution: The dispute resolution practice includes international arbitrations, civil and criminal trials, class actions, multidistrict and multinational litigations, and appellate work. It has litigated and arbitrated major cases in almost every industry and market sector. The highly regarded litigators in this practice have resolved disputes in the most nuanced and complex areas, including commercial contracts, construction law, product liability, employment, toxic tort, antitrust and trade regulation, and securities enforcement. The firm partners with clients to resolve conflicts through arbitration, mediation, or other alternative dispute resolution methods and handles arbitrations under all the major institutional rules.

Policy and regulatory: K&L Gates’ policy and regulatory lawyers counsel companies on matters involving antitrust/competition, education, environmental law, financial services, food and drug matters, government enforcement, government contracts, health care, international trade, telecommunications, and public policy, as well as corporate compliance, internal investigations, and white-collar crime. The firm’s regulatory lawyers, many with governmental backgrounds or experience in regulated industries, advise through the regulatory processes at all jurisdictional levels. K&L Gates consistently ranks among the nation’s most influential law firms in lobbying and government policy work.

Real estate: Having one of the largest, most diversified real estate practices of any global law firm, K&L Gates has extensive experience in handling large and complex real estate transactions spanning multiple jurisdictions and nationalities in the United States, Europe, the Middle East, and key markets in the Asia Pacific region. The lawyers in this practice advise clients on real estate needs related to land use, planning and zoning, development and construction, acquisitions, dispositions, financing and leasing, tax advice, joint venture structuring, and real estate-related litigation.

Global managing partner: James R. Segerdahl
Chairman of the management committee, practice area leader – financial services: Michael S. Caccese

US offices: Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth, and Houston, Texas; Boston, Massachusetts; Charlotte, Raleigh, and Research Triangle Park, North Carolina; Charleston, South Carolina; Chicago, Illinois; Harrisburg and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Kansas City, Los Angeles, Orange County, Palo Alto, and San Francisco, California; Miami, Florida; Nashville, Tennessee; Newark, New Jersey; New York, New York; Portland, Oregon; Seattle, Washington; Washington, D.C.; and Wilmington, Delaware.

International offices: The firm maintains 11 offices in the Asia Pacific region, located in Beijing, Brisbane, Hong Kong, Melbourne, Perth, Seoul, Shanghai, Singapore, Sydney, Taipei, and Tokyo; nine offices in Europe, located in Berlin, Brussels, Dublin, Frankfurt, London, Luxembourg, Milan, Munich, and Paris; two offices in the Middle East, located in Doha and Dubai; and one office in South America, located in São Paulo.