Metropolitan News-Enterprise

 

Wednesday, June 12, 2002

 

Page 5

 

Magazine Ranks Three Local Law Firms Among Nation’s 20 Best

 

By DON PARRET, Staff Writer

 

Three Los Angeles law firms have been ranked as “America’s Best Corporate Lawyers” by Corporate Board Member magazine in its latest edition.

Los Angeles firms Latham & Watkins, Gibson Dunn & Crutcher and O’Melveny & Myers were ranked in the Top 20 list of a national survey of corporation directors and general counsel.

Corporate Board Member magazine’s second annual law firm survey asked more than 24,000 board members to identify the firms they most admire, nationally and in 50 metropolitan areas.

Corporate Board Member ranked Latham & Watkins No. 8 on the list.

Latham has 1,460 attorneys in 20 offices worldwide and such high-profile clients as AOL Time Warner, Citibank, and J.P. Morgan Chase.

Corporate Board Member ranked Gibson Dunn No. 10 on the list.

“Gibson Dunn has tried to carve out a niche on the technological frontier by focusing a portion of its telecom practice on the wires and cables,” the article said. “This is the equivalent, in a way, of being up in the Rockies during the railroad revolution, laying the small pieces of track that would one day connect the continent.”

Telecommunications has fueled Gibson Dunn’s growth, the article said, which has increased revenue by 12 percent last year. The firm has positioned itself as a leader “in an area that will be a source of legal hassles for years,” it said.

“Part of what it does, says partner Bob Metzger, who heads the firm’s telecom practice, is ‘regulatory arbitrage’ — look for an edge that will allow clients to benefit from, say, vague regulation or temporarily unregulated loopholes.”

Gibson Dunn has nearly 800 lawyers in four countries and 11 offices throughout the world.

O’Melveny & Myers was ranked No. 14 on the Corporate Board Member’s list.

Founded 117 years ago, O’Melveny & Myers’ wide-ranging practice has 775 attorneys, 13 offices worldwide and major corporate clients such as Walt Disney, AOL Time Warner, and Lockheed Martin.

O’Melveny, the article states, has built its reputation on an “illustrious record of civic involvement,” including 13 years of mentoring “stars of tomorrow” in the annual mock-trial competition.

O’Melveny’s attorneys have coached mock-trial team at John Marshall High School for the past five years.

 

Copyright 2002, Metropolitan News Company