How did we find out which law firms represent America’s largest corporations? We did the research. In prior years, we asked the general counsel at the Fortune 250 to list up to seven primary law firms for each significant practice area: litigation, corporate transactions, labor and employment, and intellectual property work. But this year, seeking more complete data, we turned to public records to determine which outside counsel were used by America’s biggest companies in 2006. We looked at the areas of commercial law and contracts litigation; corporate transactions; labor and employment litigation; and intellectual property.
To find the most widely used firms for litigation involving commercial law and contracts, employment and labor, and intellectual property (which also included firms involved in trademark and copyright suits), we turned to Thomson West’s Litigation Monitor, which compiles information about lawyers, law firms, roles, representation and parties from Westlaw documents. Cases and opinions include federal circuit court dockets filed in the U.S. courts of appeals; federal district court dockets on active and inactive civil and criminal cases; and federal case law decisions from the U.S. Supreme Court, courts of appeals, former circuit courts, district courts, bankruptcy courts, former Court of Claims, Court of Federal Claims, Tax Court, related federal courts and military courts. At the time of our research, primarily last April and May, the database also contained information on 24 state dockets, although law firms are identified in only 14 of those states. Of those, nine did not cover all counties in the state.