Perkins Coie got off to a good start: founded in 1912, the Seattle-based firm's earliest clients included one William E. Boeing Sr., founder of the eponymous aeronautics company. The relationship with Boeing contributed to Perkins Coie's reputation for representing high-tech and cutting-edge ventures in what has become one of the nation's technology hotspots. The firm's intellectual property practice-including patent prosecution, patent litigation, and trademark and copyright protection and litigation-now includes nearly 225 attorneys.

While Perkins Coie represents clients in the usual big sectors, the firm has also built up some interesting niches, including wineries and vineyards, senior living centers, and airport concessions. Its list of clients includes household names like Microsoft, craigslist, Starbucks, Expedia, Google, UPS, and Costco.

Although the firm has stayed true to its Seattle roots with the largest office still in Seattle, the firm has expanded to include sixteen domestic offices, including four offices and more than 150 attorneys in California, as well as large offices with more than 100 attorneys each in the Chicago and Washington, DC offices.

Governing Government

Perkins Coie entered the national spotlight following its 2006 victory before the U.S. Supreme Court in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, in which the Court ruled that the Bush Administration's use of military commissions to try terrorism suspects was unconstitutional. The case landed in the firm's lap when erstwhile Georgetown Law Professor (and later Acting Solicitor General) Neal Katyal and JAG Lawyer and Navy Lt. Commander Charles Swift-working on behalf of Guantanamo detainee Salim Ahmed Hamdan-settled on Seattle as their venue of choice to file a lawsuit against the government. One of Katyal's former students happened to work in Perkins Coie's Seattle office, and this connection led to Perkins Coie taking the detainee's case pro bono. The case served as a dramatic rebuke to executive overreaching and stands as one of Perkins Coie's most notable victories.

More recently, the firm has represented President Barack Obama in his personal matters and federally-required financial disclosure reports. When Obama's attorney Robert Bauer left the firm to become White House counsel, partner Judith Corley took over as Obama's rep at the firm's DC office. She's the one who contacted Hawaii's health department in April 2011 to request the president's long-form birth certificate, which he released in an effort to squelch chatter about his citizenship.

Shacking up in Shanghai

In addition to domestic offices across the United States, Perkins Coie has offices in Beijing and Shanghai in Lujiazui Finance and Trade Zone-Shanghai's central financial and trade district. The Chinese offices focus primarily on intellectual property, business and personal planning matters for domestic and international clients (heavily from the technology and pharmaceutical sector). The Beijing location serves multinational clients, advising on investment and trade matters, as well as interpretation of China's business laws and regulations. Although the offices in China did not open until the early 2000s, the firm had been active in the country for several decades before that.

Towering over Taipei

The Perkins Coie office in Taipei, Taiwan was opened to expand the firm's Asia practice and to better serve its Taiwan-based clients, particularly in patent litigation and other intellectual property matters in the United States. The office is located in the Taipei 101 Tower, an international landmark and one of the world's tallest buildings. Attorneys at Perkins Coie have been actively representing Taiwanese companies for more than a decade in many high profile patent cases. The firm recently secured an important patent litigation victory for HTC before the U.S. International Trade Commission in a case filed against it and others by FlashPoint Technologies.

IN THE NEWS

June 2016
Mmmmm. Beer.

Perkins Coie represented Molson Coors Brewing Company in two significant matters.  First, the firm represented the company in its public offering of $2.5 billion of shares of its Class B Common Stock.  Perkins also won dismissal of a suit alleging that MillerCoors misled consumers by using packaging and advertising to suggest that its Blue Moon beer is a small independent microbrew or "craft" beer.

May 2016
Voter Rights

Perkins Coie represented Virginia voters in securing a unanimous victory in the U.S. Supreme Court in a key voters' rights case.  The Supreme Court's ruling let stand a lower court decision that reconfigured some of Virginia's congressional districts to remedy unlawful racial gerrymandering. The Court's decision marks the end of litigation that resulted in two separate lower court opinions in favor of Perkins Coie's clients and two trips up to the Supreme Court.

February 2016
It's Magic

Perkins Coie represented Magic Leap, Inc., a developer of a computing platform that enables users to seamlessly combine and experience their digital and physical lives, in securing $793.5 million in new funding.

August 2015
Cryptosecurity Win

Perkins Coie helped secure Securities and Exchange Commission approval allowing Overstock.com to become the first company to solicit qualified institutional buyers through a digital corporate bond that will trade using the same technology that underlies cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin.

December 2015 
Kind of a Big Deal

As reported in the Crain's Chicago Business article, "Biggest Chicago Real Estate Deals of 2015," Perkins Coie's nationally-ranked Hotels & Leisure industry group represented the buyers of Chicago's Waldorf Astoria hotel in one of Chicago's largest real estate deals.  The 189-room Waldorf-Astoria in Chicago's famed "Gold Coast" was sold to an investment group for $111.9 million, or $592,000 a room, a record for the city.