Jones Day

Jones Day was founded in Cleveland in 1893 as Blandin & Rice by two partners, Edwin J. Blandin and William Lowe Rice. Frank Ginn joined the firm in 1899, and it changed its name to Blandin, Rice & Ginn. Rice was murdered in August 1910. In 1912, Thomas H. Hogsett joined the firm as partner, and it became Blandin, Hogsett & Ginn that year, and Tolles, Hogsett, Ginn & Morley a year later after the retirement of Judge Blandin and the addition of partners Sheldon H. Tolles and John C. Morley. After Morley retired, in 1928, the firm adopted the name Tolles, Hogsett & Ginn.

In its early years, the firm was known for representing major industries in the Cleveland area, including Standard Oil and several railroad and utility companies.

In November 1938, managing partner Thomas Jones led the merger of Tolles, Hogsett & Ginn with litigation-focused firm Day, Young, Veach & LeFever to create Jones, Day, Cockley & Reavis. The merger was effective January 1, 1939. The firm's Washington, D.C., office was opened in 1946, becoming the firm's first office outside Ohio. In 1967, the firm merged with D.C. firm Pogue & Neal to become Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue.

Legal actions against unions

In the late 2010s and early 2020s, Jones Day represented several companies in legal proceedings against labor unions, including unions for employees of The Boston Globe in 2018 and Slate and Politics and Prose in 2021.

International expansion

The international expansion of Jones Day began in 1986 when the firm merged with boutique law firm Surrey & Morse, a firm of 75 attorneys with international offices in New York City, Paris, London, and Washington, D.C. In the following years, the firm expanded to Hong Kong, Brussels, Tokyo, Taipei, and Frankfurt.

Republican Party and conservative politics

Jones Day has historically focused on corporate law, but since Stephen Brogan became managing partner in 2003, it has increasingly shifted to aiding the Republican Party and the American conservative movement. In 2025, The Atlantic wrote that it was known for its Republican clients and for its conservative advocacy. During the Barack Obama administration, Jones Day challenged the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Jones Day provided services to Donald Trump for his personal legal problems, as well as helping his 2016 presidential campaign amid investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 election. This defense included trying to control which documents to hand over to investigators and which staff members to make available for interviews. A substantial number of Jones Day lawyers then joined the first Donald Trump administration. Jones Day partner Don McGahn, who was previously a member of the Federal Election Commission, served as counsel for the 2016 Trump presidential campaign and was later nominated to serve as Trump's White House Counsel. As of March 2017, at least 14 Jones Day attorneys had been appointed to work for the Trump administration.

Jones Day was outside counsel for the Trump 2016 and Trump 2020 campaigns. From 2015 to November 2020, Jones Day received more than $20 million in fees from the Trump campaigns. Jones Day earned more than $4.5 million for Trump 2020 campaign work between January 1, 2019 and August 31, 2020.

In 2018, Jones Day was the fifth largest law firm in the U.S. and the 13th highest grossing law firm in the world. It is currently headquartered in Washington, D.C.

In 2019, some associates reported being under-compensated, compared to their peers at other firms, sometimes by tens of thousands of dollars, and that their compensation is much lower than what they were promised when they interviewed.

In 2023, it was among the largest law firms in the United States, with 2,302 attorneys, and ranked among the highest-grossing in the world, with revenues of $2.5 billion in 2022.