Sidley Austin

1866–1900s: Origins in Chicago

In 1866, Norman Williams and John L. Thompson founded the law firm of Williams & Thompson in Chicago, Illinois. In 1876, the firm organized the Western Electric Company and Illinois Bell, and the Bell System became a longtime client.[10] Mary Todd Lincoln was another early client,[11] seeking counsel following her husband Abraham Lincoln's death.[12]

William Pratt Sidley, who had joined the firm in 1892, was added to the firm's name in 1900 when it was renamed Holt, Wheeler & Sidley. Edwin C. Austin joined the firm in 1914.[13] Among the firm's first clients were the Pullman Company, the manufacturer of specialty sleeping railway cars, as well as Western Electric and Illinois Steel.[13]

1900s: Expansion and consolidation

In 1963, former postmaster general J. Edward Day left the administration of President John F. Kennedy to establish the firm's Washington, D.C. office.[14] Initial clients included the Advertising Mail Marketing Association.[15]

In 1972, Sidley & Austin, with 100 lawyers, merged with the 50 lawyers of Chicago firm Leibman, Williams, Bennett, Baird & Minow.[16] Additional offices were then established in London in 1974 and in Singapore and New York in 1982.[17] Day, a chair of the firm's Washington, D.C., office prior to the merger, sued Sidley & Austin in response to the relocation of the merged firm's Washington office and being asked to share chairmanship of the office, although Day had approved and signed the merger agreement and amended partner agreement. A U.S. District Court judge dismissed the suit, and all appeals were denied.[18] The case is sometimes cited in discussions of partnership law.[19][20]

In 1975, Charles E. Lomax joined the firm, later becoming its first black partner. His clients included Don King and Muhammad Ali,[21] for whom the firm arranged fights.[10] In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Sidley & Austin represented AT&T in the time leading up to and during United States v. AT&T.[22]

In 1985, Sidley & Austin became the first law firm to establish a standalone appellate practice for U.S. Supreme Court cases,[23] recruiting Benjamin W. Heineman Jr. to lead it, as well as former U.S. Solicitor General Rex E. Lee.[24] By 2012, the firm had argued 106 Supreme Court cases and was involved in approximately 40% of the cases the Court heard each year. The head of Sidley's D.C. office, Carter Phillips,[23] had argued 76 cases before the Supreme Court by June 2012, more than any other active lawyer.[25]

Sidley & Austin was among several law firms involved in the Savings & Loan Crisis; the firm paid $7.5 million in 1991 to settle legal malpractice claims stemming from its representation of the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association.[26]

Michelle Obama (formerly Robinson) met her future husband and future President Barack Obama in 1989 while both worked at Sidley, when Michelle was in her first year as an associate and Barack was a summer associate.[27] In 1995, a group of women lawyers at Sidley co-founded the firm's Women in Leadership program.[28]

2000s

In 2001, the firm merged with Brown & Wood, a New York-based law firm established in 1914 with 400 attorneys and additional domestic offices in Washington, D.C., San Francisco and Los Angeles and overseas branches in London, Beijing and Hong Kong (where it practiced English law in addition to U.S. law). Brown & Wood was known for its securities, structured finance and securitization practices. Brown & Wood had offices in the World Trade Center on floors 54 and 56-59.[29]

The combined firm planned to move into the World Trade Center; it was decorating and furnishing additional space when the September 11 attacks occurred. In July 2002, Sidley Austin moved into the Axa Equitable Center in Midtown Manhattan.[30]

In 2002, Sidley was among the first law firms to establish a practice dedicated to international trade law.[31] The firm signed on as the anchor tenant for One South Dearborn in Chicago in 2003.[32]

In 2007, Sidley Austin agreed to pay $39 million as part of a settlement with the Internal Revenue Service, which allowed the firm to avoid criminal charges of alleged fraudulent tax shelter activities.[33] The previous year, Sidley and KPMG agreed to pay $54 million to investors who bought the shelters.[34]

Sidley Austin represented Airbus in petitioning the World Trade Organization to allow the European Union to take countermeasures against the U.S. government in response to its subsidies of Boeing, succeeding in 2019.[35] As of 2019, the firm had represented a party in approximately half of the last 550 disputes brought before the World Trade Organization.[36]

Sidley maintains offices in 21 cities worldwide, adding Miami in 2022[37] and San Diego in 2024.[38]

Lobbying for Chinese tech companies

In August 2019, Politico reported that the Chinese technology company, Huawei, hired Sidley Austin to lobby on their behalf after the Trump administration set restrictions on their business transactions with the U.S. Federal Government. Trade, sanctions, export controls, "and other national security-related topics," were to be the subjects of lobbying efforts, according to reported disclosure filings.[39]

In October 2022, Reuters and Politico reported that Sidley Austin updated its registration under the Foreign Agents Registration Act as a lobbyist for Hikvision USA, a California-based subsidiary of the Chinese video surveillance company, as requested by the U.S. Justice Department.[40][41] In their registration, the law firm reported having received approximately $7.4 million in fees since beginning their representation in 2018. The firm had initially registered under the U.S. Lobbying Disclosure Act when it was first retained by the company.[40][42]

Sidley Austin was hired by DJI Technologies in early 2024 after the drone maker was dropped by other agencies in February of that year.[43][44]