Baker McKenzie

Co-founding partner Russell Baker, who had graduated from the University of Chicago Law School, opened his first practice, Baker & Simpson, with Dana Simpson, in Chicago in 1925. The firm provided legal services to the growing Mexican American community in Chicago, which would set a foundation for its global reach. Simpson retired in 1932.

In 1949 Baker was joined by John McKenzie, a graduate from Loyola University Chicago School of Law, who helped further establish the international practice.

Baker McKenzie became the first multinational law firm in the world, beginning in 1955, after a lawyer in Venezuela contacted the firm, seeking to open a joint venture office in Caracas. Russell Baker's son, Donald, moved to Caracas to launch the satellite office. Within the next three years, offices were opened in Washington, D.C., Amsterdam, Brussels, Zürich, New York City and São Paulo. By 1978, Baker McKenzie had 26 offices in 20 countries. By 1990, the firm operated 49 offices on six continents, employing around 1500 attorneys, and generating $400 million in annual revenue.

In 1999, Christine Lagarde, the Paris managing partner and an antitrust and labor lawyer, was elected chair of the global executive committee, the first woman to lead Baker McKenzie, or a major international law firm; she was chair for five years. Legarde later became France's Minister of Finance and managing director of the International Monetary Fund.

In 2001, the firm employed 3,000 attorneys and garnered $1 billion in revenues. In 2005, 70 partners, and other legal staff, from the New York office of disbanding international firm Coudert Brothers joined Baker McKenzie.

In 2004, Baker McKenzie was the first major law firm to become a Swiss Verein. In October 2006, Unilever chose the firm to manage its global trademark portfolio, the largest in the world, with over 160,000 registrations, marking the first time a multinational company outsourced its trademark management to a law firm on such a large scale.

In July 2013, co-founding partner Russell Baker was named one of American Lawyer's top 50 innovators for pioneering ideas and initiatives that changed the world of BigLaw.

In August 2014, Baker McKenzie revealed it was the first law firm to record $2.5 billion in revenues since the 2008 financial crisis, and that it was also the largest firm in the world by headcount.

Controversies

In 1986, Geoffrey Bowers, then a New York attorney, filed a complaint with the New York State Division of Human Rights, charging that he had been fired from his job at the Manhattan branch of Baker McKenzie law firm after AIDS-related lesions appeared on his face. The firm maintained that he was fired purely for his performance. Two months after testifying at a hearing on the complaint, he died at age 33. The case was resolved in his favor in late December when Baker McKenzie was ordered to pay $500,000 to Bowers' estate. It was one of the first AIDS discrimination cases to go to a public hearing. Baker McKenzie appealed but subsequently withdrew the appeal after they negotiated a confidential settlement in 1995 with Bowers' family forbidding parties from ever discussing the case or the terms of the agreement. These events were one inspiration for the film Philadelphia, starring Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington (the script of which was derived from numerous sources).

In 1994, in a seminal case, a legal secretary, Rena Weeks, successfully sued the law firm for sexual harassment. The trial court ordered the law firm to pay $6.9 million in punitive damages, making it one of the largest damage awards in history for this type of action. On May 4, 1998, the California Court of Appeal for the First District upheld the trial court's judgment in full, and the Supreme Court of California denied review. A subsequent dispute among Weeks' victorious attorneys as to the division of fees among them (she had signed a contingent fee agreement for 40% of her recovery) did reach the Supreme Court of California in 2002; the court held that the later-associated co-counsel could not recover the full amount he sought because Weeks' attorneys had not obtained her consent to an agreement to split fees among co-counsel from different firms as required by California court rules. Martin R. Greenstein, the partner whose actions resulted in Weeks' successful lawsuit, was given a public reproval by the State Bar of California on March 26, 1998, and for obvious reasons, is no longer with Baker McKenzie (the Court of Appeal decision noted that he was terminated by the firm in August 1993).

In September 2022, after 40 years of existence in the UAE, Baker McKenzie announced that it would swiftly separate from its Emirati partner, Habib Al Mulla. The law firm raised a concern regarding the homophobic Twitter posts by Mulla, whose firm merged with Baker McKenzie in 2013. Mulla sparked controversy when he described homosexuality as "ugly" in his tweets. Baker McKenzie's head of investigations Borys Dackiw was temporarily appointed to lead. The law firm said it wanted to "ensure an inclusive work environment for all".

Tax avoidance

In 2021, the law firm was listed in the Pandora Papers after the law firm conducted offshoring activities for organizations outside of the United States. One of the actions includes setting up shell companies in Cyprus for RJR Nabisco (which has split up), creating a tax shelter for Nike, as well as moving Facebook's tax headquarters to Ireland, allowing these companies to avoid taxes. Baker McKenzie's clients include Malaysian fugitive Jho Low.

Baker McKenzie has boasted about helping to set up tax-free zones in the UAE, which critics say encourage illicit activity. Baker McKenzie has lobbied against legislation to curb offshore tax avoidance by big companies and lobbied against legislation that would increase due diligence for foreign customers of American banks.

According to the ICIJ, Baker McKenzie is "an architect of the modern tax avoidance system." The company has helped fraudsters, corrupt officials and elites in authoritarian regimes avoid taxes and hide wealth through the use of shell companies, trusts and complex structures in tax havens. The Pandora Papers mentioned Baker McKenzie more than any other major U.S. law firm – the leaks alone revealed that Baker McKenzie was involved in setting up more than 440 offshore companies registered in tax havens.