Choate Hall & Stewart LLP

Co-Managing Partners: Charles A Cheever, Rob Kole

Number of equity partners: 64

Firm Overview:

One of the nation’s premier law firms, Choate has chosen to be distinctly different in a number of important respects from the firms with which it competes. The firm believes those differences materially benefit clients. Like a handful of leading Wall Street firms, Choate conducts its national and international practice through a single office model. The firm is all under one roof. Lawyers know each other well and work in teams every day. That familiarity, proximity and continuity allows them to communicate quickly, share knowledge easily and respond to clients’ needs not just efficiently, but seamlessly and immediately.

Main Areas of Practice:

Private Equity/M&A:

Choate launched one of the first private equity funds in 1983, and today represents sophisticated and active private equity sponsors and their portfolio companies around the globe. Decades of experience— with teams who focus on the middle market—allows the firm to understand clients’ business objectives and provide the strategic advice they need to meet their goals. Today, the private equity and M&A team is the largest group in the Firm, with more than 60 professionals focused on helping their clients execute their most important transactions.

Intellectual Property

For more than four decades, Choate has served as trusted intellectual property counsel to leading pharmaceutical and biotech companies, technology companies, and investors. The firm has experience representing clients throughout their life cycle from startup to maturity. At every phase, the firm provides strategic counsel for the protection of valuable assets and the management of global patent portfolios, navigate competitive commercial and IP landscapes, perform and respond to IP diligence assessments, negotiate IP agreements, and assert or defend IP disputes in court or at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Clients who partner with Choate get the advantage of an extensive partner-led experience, true teamwork and an entrepreneurial culture, all of which help build successful businesses and transform great science and technologies into valuable assets.

Finance & Restructuring:

Choate has one of the premier debt finance and restructuring practices in the United States representing money center banks, private credit lenders, finance companies, hedge funds, business development companies, mezzanine investors and insurance companies in transactions across a wide variety of industries. The firm's decades of experience provide them with unique insight into the deal terms and key documentation issues that are most important to sophisticated market participants. In particular, they have deep capabilities in sponsor-backed cash flow and asset-based facilities, acquisition financings, multi-tranche facilities, structured loan arrangements, complex restructurings and bankruptcies, mass tort bankruptcies, and other special situations.

Business and Financial Litigation

Choate is a go-to firm for complex, high stakes business litigation. They help sophisticated clients across jurisdictions resolve their most challenging business disputes through various forms of litigation, including trials, arbitrations, and appeals. And, unlike many lawyers today, they are trial lawyers – able to develop sophisticated strategies that win. The firm's experience in trying cases often leads to a negotiated resolution favorable to their clients.

Government Enforcement & Compliance:

With extensive experience successfully responding to a full range of criminal and civil enforcement actions and prosecutions, companies and their executives trust Choate with sensitive high-stakes matters, including those initiated by DOJ, HHS-OIG, SEC, FINRA, DOL and other federal agencies and states’ attorneys general.

Insurance & Reinsurance:

Choate represents reinsurers, insurers, and intermediaries in some of their most important and complex coverage disputes, litigation, and arbitration. They have a leading international reinsurance trial/arbitration practice, with expertise in litigating and arbitrating disputes concerning property catastrophe reinsurance (hurricanes, wildfires, winter storm losses, industry loss warranties, catastrophe bonds), life and annuity reinsurance, financial reinsurance, health reinsurance, and asbestos and other environmental losses. Their direct-side coverage work is nationally recognized, including their expertise involving disputes concerning opioid litigation, asbestos, pollution, mass casualty incidents, and rescission based on policyholder misrepresentations.

Wealth Management:

Built on more than 100 years of history and experience, Choate Wealth is a fully-integrated, high-touch, multi-family office where clients receive all of the legal, investment, tax, philanthropic, and administrative services under one roof. The firm also offer professional trustee services and independent investment management advice through its SEC-registered advisory firm with more than $8.7 billion of assets under management.

International Work:

The firm has preeminent US-Canada and US-Europe cross-border transactional practices. The corporate team represent clients in cross-border activities and works with numerous companies headquartered in the EU on expansion into the US. Choate litigators have arbitrated and litigated disputes throughout the world.

Clients:

Choate represents market leading ‘Best of Breed’ clients in each of its practice areas. Those clients range from Fortune 500 institutions, to private equity funds, to leading public and private companies, to wealthy families/individuals. Clients include: HewlettPackard Enterprise, Bain Capital Life Sciences, Bank of America, John Hancock, Riverside Partners, The Hartford, BV Investment Partners, Liberty Mutual, Takeda, Wells Fargo, EMC/Dell, MIT, Spectrum Equity, Momenta Pharmaceuticals, Summit Partners, OneWeb, Harvard University, Alnylam, Celgene, and Foundation Medicine.