Latham & Watkins

Dana Latham and Paul Watkins found the law firm in Los Angeles. Latham & Watkins is one of the world's largest law firms, with about 1,000 attorneys practicing in 14 American and international offices. It represents business clients in many industries, including healthcare, software, and technology. From its historic foundation of tax and labor law, Latham & Watkins has diversified to provide counsel on virtually all aspects of modern business practice, including financing, bankruptcy, regulatory compliance, litigation, and intellectual property issues. Because of the firm's emphasis on teamwork and cooperation, it has often been cited as one of the nation's best-managed law firms. Dana Latham and Paul R. Watkins were both born in Illinois in the late 1890s. Latham graduated from Harvard Law School in 1922, and Watkins studied law at Illinois Wesleyan University. In January 1934 the partners founded a law firm in Los Angeles. Latham's expertise was in state and federal tax law, while Watkins, formerly the general counsel for Pacific Finance Corporation, built a strong practice in labor law. In spite of the Great Depression, the new law firm prospered. Its first significant client was Consolidated Rock Products Company (which was still a client fifty years later). Within a year the partnership had gained clients including Pacific Finance Corporation; the Crushed Stone, Sand & Gravel Association (the predecessor of the Southern California Rock Products Association); West Shore Company; the Rule Company; Western Geophysical Company; and the London retailer Fortnum & Mason. Soon after the United Geophysical Company was founded in 1937, it began using the services of Latham & Watkins. As United Geophysical was exploring for oil overseas, especially in Central and South America, the law firm gained its first experience in international law. When Consolidated Engineering Corporation was spun off from United Geophysical and became a public corporation, Latham & Watkins began its initial venture into securities law. Herbert Hoover, Jr., the son of President Herbert Hoover, played an important role in helping Latham & Watkins gain several early clients, including United Geophysical. The partnership developed an emphasis on labor law after the passage of the National Labor Relations Act in 1935, which guaranteed collective bargaining. The firm represented employers in many union disputes, and major unions opposed the firm. By the time World War II began in 1939, Latham & Watkins had four attorneys. During the war, the company continued to prosper, in part because many new laws and regulations were enacted as part of the war effort. In the early years of World War II, Latham began representing Major Corliss Champion Moseley, who ran aviation companies based in Southern California. During the war Moseley trained some 26,000 pilots and 13,000 mechanics at the Glendale, California, airport under a federal contract and was a key player in building up civilian and military aviation capabilities during the war and into the early 1950s. In the early postwar period the firm grew as it recruited young attorneys and some of its veterans returned, and in 1949 Latham & Watkins established its first written partnership agreement. By 1954 the firm employed 14 attorneys and had begun to develop a litigation practice. In 1967 Latham & Watkins remained modest in size with just 30 attorneys, but rapid growth in the years ahead made it one of the nation's largest firms, surpassing many law firms that were much older. Clinton R. Stevenson was chosen managing partner in 1967. Three years later Latham & Watkins installed a new computer system, 'the first installation of its size and nature in a law firm west of the Mississippi,' according to its corporate history, Bold Beginnings. In 1972 two partners opened an office in Santa Ana, Orange County, in a building owned by one of the firm's clients, C.J. Segerstrom & Sons. By 1983 the Orange County office