Chicago: At Work

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Practicing law in Chicago presents many unique opportunities to our associates. As the largest city in the Midwest and the third largest city in the United States, Chicago is not only a key legal market, but a preeminent center for business and finance. Centrally located in the heart of the "Loop" financial district, nestled between the Chicago River and Lake Michigan and surrounded by Chicago's "L" trains, our office is an easy commute for professionals. The court houses, the futures and options exchanges and the Federal Reserve Bank are all within a few blocks of each other.

Chicago is renowned for its skyscrapers, particularly the John Hancock Center and the Sears Tower, and is considered a beacon of architectural achievement.

Chicago is renowned for its skyscrapers, particularly the John Hancock Center and the Willis Tower, and is considered a beacon of architectural achievement.

Associates in Ropes & Gray's Chicago office have the opportunity to work with an impressive list of clients in the following practice areas:

Private Equity
Private Investment Funds
Securities and Public Companies
Investment Management
Litigation
Intellectual Property
Health Care

Private Equity and Private Investment Funds
Ropes & Gray is one of the few global firms that makes serving the needs of private equity clients a major focus. For more than 25 years, our lawyers have regularly represented all of the various participants in the formation of private equity funds, including leveraged private equity sponsors, investors and placement agents. We have one of the largest and most sophisticated private investment fund practices in the country. Structuring these funds requires an intimate familiarity with the relevant securities and investment company rules, and a significant amount of tax, ERISA, and industry knowledge. We represent a large number of university endowments, foundations, funds of funds, pension funds, and other institutional investors in hundreds of private equity, mezzanine, venture, CDO, hedge, and other funds with a total committed capital of over $600 billion.

We have one of the nation’s leading practices advising transaction sponsors and other participants in all aspects of leveraged acquisitions and related private equity transactions, including:

Acquisition and disposition
Equity financing
Management compensation
Seller financing
Mezzanine debt
High yield bond financings and senior financings

Securities and Public Companies
Our Securities and Public Companies Practice provides advice to clients with sophisticated corporate, securities and transactional law issues. We represent clients in all facets of public company and capital markets. While each client has specific needs, all of our clients benefit from our expertise centered around four major areas:

Counseling public companies in a wide variety of matters involving considerations of general corporate law and securities law and regulations
Advising companies and investment bankers on a full range of financing activities involving the 1933 Securities Act and other legal expertise generally required in connection with sophisticated financings
Coordinating mergers and acquisition activities and other strategic transactions
Advising institutional investors on transactions involving complex securities law considerations

Investment Management
Ropes & Gray's Investment Management Practice is among the largest and most diversified of any law firm. We serve as regular counsel for more than 900 mutual funds (or their independent directors or trustees). The principal focus of our practice in Chicago is the representation of investment advisers, commodity trading advisors, hedge fund sponsors, commodity pool operators and their service providers. We represent numerous fund sponsors in the organization and offering of alternative investment fund products, both U.S. and off-shore vehicles. In addition to our regular representation of investment advisers and commodity trading advisors, we have an active mergers and acquisitions practice representing buyers and sellers of money management businesses.

Associate Jennifer Genzler (Loyola University Chicago School of Law '05) and Debbie Monson regularly work on Investment Management matters.

Litigation
Our Chicago litigation practice is a key component of, and fully integrated with, our firmwide Litigation Practice. Our trial lawyers handle a wide array of complex disputes in courts throughout the country and respond to inquiries by a wide variety of government authorities. We also participate in pre-litigation counseling and alternative dispute resolution, and we have an active practice mediating and arbitrating disputes on behalf of our clients to help our clients avoid the burden of litigation, where appropriate. While our clients' matters bring us in touch with nearly every substantive field of law, particular active practice areas include Complex Business Litigation, Government Enforcement, Insurance, Intellectual Property, Public Issues, and Securities. In each of these areas, our associates play leading roles in the work we do.

Partner Asheesh Goel works closely with associates Amanda Raad (Indiana University School of Law '05) and Brent Jones (University of Virginia School of Law '07).

Partner Jeff Bushofsky often works with associates Nick Berg (Georgetown University Law Center '05) and Megan Dolan (Chicago-Kent School of Law '06)

In addition to our general Commercial Litigation practice in Chicago, the Chicago office's Government Enforcement Group handles a wide array of criminal and regulatory matters. We represent both corporations and individuals in criminal cases, internal investigations and regulatory enforcement proceedings. The Group also assist clients in developing compliance programs and employee training so that companies remain up to date on recent enforcement trends.

Intellectual Property
Ropes & Gray's intellectual property litigation capabilities took a quantum leap forward with the firm's combination with Fish & Neave in January 2005. Consistently ranked as one of the top IP litigation practices nationwide, our dynamic IP Litigation Group has multiple trials in progress at any time. We litigate intellectual property cases across the country and counsel in the areas of patents, trade secrets, trademarks and unfair competition on a world wide basis. We represent numerous major corporations in patent litigation in a wide variety of industries, including the chemical, pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device industries.

Click here to see the 2010 NALP form for the Chicago office