A pioneer to the global legal practice, Cleary Gottlieb has the ability to serve clients anywhere in the world. We regularly assist clients on major matters in:

        United States
        Europe
        Asia
        Latin America


United States

Our founders established Cleary Gottlieb in 1946 with the simultaneous opening of offices in New York and Washington, D.C. Today, we are regularly recognized as among the best firms in the United States. We have ranked in the top ten on The American Lawyer’s “A-List” ranking of the most “elite firms” in the United States, based on factors ranging from business success to commitment to pro bono work, in every year since the publication began the survey in 2003.

Our U.S.-based lawyers work closely with the lawyers in our other offices to represent U.S.- and internationally based clients on many of their largest and most complex matters. Many of our U.S.-based lawyers have had international experience and have spent years in one or more of our offices around the world, contributing to their ability to manage skillfully the most international of assignments. In addition, in keeping with our firm-wide organization, our New York and Washington, D.C. offices are not departmentalized, and many of our lawyers in these offices are experienced practitioners in more than one practice area.

With more than 400 lawyers, our New York office is our largest office and an important center of the firm’s activity. The office is representative of our comprehensive practice, with lawyers working in all of our firm’s principal practice areas.

A focal point of the firm’s U.S. antitrust and regulatory practices, our Washington, D.C. office has approximately 100 lawyers. The Washington, D.C. office works collaboratively with counterparts in our European offices to provide premier global competition/antitrust counsel to clients in some of the most challenging transactions in the most highly regulated industries. The office’s regulatory practice comprises securities regulatory and enforcement matters, bank regulatory and compliance issues, and matters related to environmental and energy law. Our Washington, D.C. office also boasts a first-rate transactional practice, with lawyers advising leading U.S.- and internationally based clients on the full array of corporate and litigation assignments.

Europe

With a strong and deep-rooted presence in Europe for more than 50 years, the firm has earned a reputation for quality by representing clients in each individual market it has entered, as well as in groundbreaking cross-border transactions. We achieved this reputation in Europe, where we have eight offices and approximately 300 lawyers in major financial and regulatory centers, by listening to our clients’ needs and growing our practice accordingly.

After opening our first international office in Paris in 1949 and advising Jean Monnet, the chief architect of the European Community, on the implementation of the Marshall Plan and the development of the Treaties of the European Communities, we opened offices in Brussels in 1960; London in 1971; Frankfurt and Moscow in 1991; Rome in 1998; Milan in 2001; and Cologne in 2004. Today, more than one-third of our lawyers firm-wide are based in Europe. Each of our European offices, while an integral part of the firm as a whole, is in its own right a vibrant, well-integrated and respected part of its local legal community.

With most of the partners in our European offices native of and authorized to practice law in the countries where they work, our European offices provide clients with substantial local law expertise and a vast understanding of regional business culture and custom. Our Paris office, for example, has been referred to as “the most American of French law firms and the most French of American law firms.” At the same time, lawyers throughout our European offices regularly work hand-in-hand with lawyers in our U.S. and Asian offices to meet the global needs of clients whose increasingly complex transactions and proceedings often cross jurisdictions and require advice from lawyers with many different practice specialties. The many U.S. partners and associates who are resident in our European offices also allow us to handle locally the U.S. legal work on transatlantic matters.

Our European practice encompasses capital markets, competition/antitrust, mergers and acquisitions, private equity, tax, international trade and regulatory work, restructuring and bankruptcy, intellectual property and litigation. Our European lawyers are recognized as among the world’s best in many of these areas, handling the largest and most innovative matters in their respective countries and around the world.  For instance, our Moscow office advised on the debut Russian sovereign Eurobond offering, the only two SEC-registered IPOs by Russian companies since the Russian financial crisis of 1998, the reorganization of a leading company in the Russian utilities sector, and the financing for the Blue Stream project to build and operate a gas pipeline from Russia to Turkey under the Black Sea.

As we have expanded in Europe, we have maintained our focus on providing consistently high quality legal services to our clients and have retained a culture of collegiality that supports this objective. To achieve this level of client service, we have focused on organic growth and, unlike other firms, have not expanded by merging or acquiring local firms. This ensures that our lawyers throughout Europe—and throughout the world—share the same professional values and high standards for their work, operating as one team focused on helping our clients meet and exceed their goals.

Asia

One of the first international firms to open an office in Asia, Cleary Gottlieb has maintained a strong presence throughout the region for more than 25 years. We opened our office in Hong Kong in 1980 and have developed an understanding of the region and a keen ability to work efficiently both for our clients based in Asia and for those doing business there. In 2006, the firm opened an office in Beijing to accommodate the growth of business in mainland China and to meet our clients’ evolving needs.

Today, we have approximately 30 lawyers resident in these two offices, many of whom are native language speakers. The Hong Kong and Beijing offices specialize in the largest and most complex securities transactions (debt and equity), mergers and acquisitions, private equity, sovereign debt and restructuring transactions throughout the region. In addition to our longstanding commitment and success in North Asia (particularly Greater China and Korea), we also work on important transactions in South and Southeast Asia.

The firm’s offices in Asia advise clients on a wide range of corporate transactional matters. We handle a significant amount of sovereign work for either Korea or for Korean companies and have been counsel to both Malaysia and to the Republic of Indonesia in first-of-their kind issuances. In recent years, the firm has also worked on a raft of significant M&A in Asia, including the largest-ever foreign investment in Korea as well as the first—and still only—control acquisition of a Chinese financial institution by a foreign investor. In capital markets, Cleary Gottlieb has been counsel to six out of eight Korean companies to list on the New York Stock Exchange and the largest ever IPO by a Korean company.

Latin America

For almost half a century, Cleary Gottlieb has been unrivaled among international law firms in Latin America. Committed to the region longer than any other U.S.-based firm, Cleary Gottlieb has helped its clients in Latin America in a series of historic transactions that has reshaped the business landscape throughout the entire region. With more than 80 lawyers who speak Spanish and more than 20 who speak Portuguese, the firm has a strong group of lawyers who not only possess the legal knowledge to handle any transaction but who also have the ability to communicate efficiently with clients throughout Latin America.

Our representations include two-thirds of all sovereigns in the region and our landmark achievements include the development of Brady Bonds for Mexico, the restructuring of more Latin American debt than any other firm, including Argentina’s historic $100 billion debt exchange, and advising on the debut IPO and listing on the Novo Mercado of the São Paulo Stock Exchange.

Our longstanding Latin American practice extends to capital markets transactions, project and trade finance, joint ventures, privatizations, debt management, asset securitization, mergers and acquisitions, technology transfers and litigation and dispute resolution. And in virtually every country in the region, our lawyers have designed financings for natural resource development, electric power, transportation, industrialization and infrastructure projects. With innovative financing techniques, Cleary Gottlieb assists clients in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama and Venezuela in achieving their objectives.

With 12 offices in Asia, Europe and the United States, we can provide seamless service across borders and between jurisdictions. The lawyers in our Latin America practice have a deep knowledge of the region and collaborate with those in other countries and in other disciplines as called for by a given transaction.

In its 15-year anniversary issue, Latin Finance magazine named Cleary Gottlieb the “Top Legal Advisor” in Latin America based on Thomson Financial’s league tables for the period 1988 to 2003. The magazine also rated Cleary Gottlieb as the number one legal advisor to Latin American sovereign and corporate issuers, and to M&A acquirors over the same period.  The American Lawyer magazine in 2003 credited Cleary Gottlieb with “representing more countries in [Latin America] than any other law firm.”