Litigation & Investigations in Action: 2024

Annual Snapshot

• Our team of over 550 lawyers
• Supported over 1,000 clients
• Across more than 30 jurisdictions
• In over 19,000 matters
• Achieving year-on-year revenue growth of 12%

Rankings

Department

• 27 ranked departments - Chambers & Partners
• 27 ranked departments - Legal 500
• 15 ranked departments - Best Law Firms in America

Individual

• 60 ranked lawyers - Chambers & Partners
• 102 recognised lawyers - Best Lawyers
• 5 lawyers inducted into the 'Hall of Fame' - Legal 500 UK
• 5 lawyers awarded 'Lawyer of the Year' - Best Lawyers in America 

Smart solutions for winning outcomes

• Bayer AG: Share price rises +10% after Third Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled that Pennsylvania’s state-based failure-to-warn claims brought by plaintiffs are pre-empted by federal law.
• Playtech: Share price rises +15% following a settlement in a long-running multi-jurisdictional dispute, including concurrent litigation and arbitration proceedings, with its commercial venture partner and other associated parties.

PRO BONO

• Release of wrongfully convicted prisoner after 34 years:

  On July 24, the trial court vacated Christopher Dunn’s conviction for first-degree murder after 34 years behind bars and ordered his release by 6:00 p.m. that day. The Missouri Attorney General’s office reacted by instructing the prison not to release Dunn and continue to hold him in custody until the completion of any appeals. Dunn had already changed from a prison jumpsuit into street clothes and was 50 feet away from freedom before prison guards returned him to his cell. 

  Based on BCLP’s longstanding collaboration with Midwest Innocence Project, our Pro Bono Committee offered to take over Dunn’s emergency appeal and filed a brief with the Missouri Supreme Court less than 24 hours later. After waiting another six long days, the supreme court rejected the Attorney General’s arguments and held that the prison had no right to keep Dunn in custody. Within hours, a prison van had spirited Dunn across the state to reunite him with his family.
  
• Appellate Team Secures Hague Convention Win: A BCLP team of appellate attorneys recently achieved a significant victory in a Hague Convention case, successfully reuniting a German mother with her child who had been wrongfully retained for over a year. In the instant case, the child’s father had been keeping the child in Chicago since July 2023 in violation of the mother’s custody rights under German law. The mother won an order from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois requiring that the child be returned to her in Germany, but the father obtained a stay of the order and appealed. BCLP attorneys eagerly stepped in to represent the mother on appeal. Just weeks after oral argument, the Seventh Circuit affirmed that the child must return to Germany with the mother.

Partner Promotions

• Peter Bay - Class Actions & Mass Torts (St. Louis)
• Ethan Fitzpatrick - Patent Litigation (New York)
• Emilee Hargis - Antitrust, Competition & Trade (St. Louis)
• Sam Hofmeier - Class Actions & Mass Torts (Kansas City)
• Sarah Holdmeyer - Employment & Labor (Kansas City)
• Merrit Jones - Class Actions & Mass Torts (San Francisco)
• Alexandra Kirby - Business & Commercial Disputes (London)
• Katherine Pope - Employment & Labor (London)
• Jennifer Varley - Construction Disputes (London)
• Adam Vukovic - Class Actions & Mass Torts (San Francisco)
• Kristin Webb - Business & Commercial Disputes (Irvine)

Lateral Hires

• Shane P. Cramer - Business & Commercial Disputes (Seattle)
• Jenny Anne Durkan - Financial Services Disputes & Investigations (Seattle)
• Tyler L. Farmer - Business & Commercial Disputes (Seattle)
• Erin E. Ehlert - Business & Commercial Disputes (Seattle)
• Joshua Hess - Financial Services Disputes & Investigations (Atlanta)
• Timothy G. Leyh - Business & Commercial Disputes (Seattle)
• Ariel Martinez - Business & Commercial Disputes (Seattle)
• Emmet P. Ong - Financial Services Disputes & Investigations (San Francisco)
• Shivani Sanghi - Business & Commercial Disputes (London)
• David B. Schwartz - Antitrust, Competition & Trade (Washington DC)
• Randall T. Thomsen - Business & Commercial Disputes (Seattle)
• Nelson Williams - Employment & Labor (St. Louis)

Thought Leadership

• Confronting Corruption:

  Our Confronting Corruption series promoted actionable insights and perspectives on preventing and investigating corruption – culminating with International Anti-Corruption Day on December 9 2024. 

  Our analysis of legal frameworks and best practice sought to foster a comprehensive understanding of the effects of corruption, thereby helping our clients to build resilient systems that safeguard against corruption and uphold the rule of law.

• Annual Arbitration Survey 2024: As part of our Confronting Corruption campaign, this year's Annual Arbitration Survey focused on the issue of corruption and the challenges it poses for international arbitration. 

  Recent cases have highlighted the challenges faced by arbitrators when dealing with corruption allegations and the impact that this can have on the reputation of arbitration as a method of dispute resolution. 

  This year’s survey canvased views on some of those risks and asks whether change is needed to avoid arbitration becoming a safe harbour for corruption.

• Emerging Themes - People in Focus: BCLP’s Emerging Themes in Financial Regulation & Disputes keeps our clients up to date on the fast-paced world of financial regulation and disputes with regular updates and insights from our financial services lawyers. 

  For 2024, our overarching theme was ‘People in Focus‘, in which our team examines three main pillars: Consumers, Change and Conduct.

• The Growth of Class Actions:

  Continuing our regular series of updates on the world of class actions and mass claims throughout 2024, our global team delved into some of the key areas of focus, including the Courts of England & Wales' developing approach to representative actions in light of their own case management powers; the strategic decisions faced when choosing between the Competition Appeals Tribunal and High Court; and class representative actions in the United States.