Morrison & Foerster

Morrison & Foerster LLP
Headquarters	425 Market Street; San Francisco
No. of offices	17 (2019)
No. of attorneys	750 - 1000 (2019)
Major practice areas	Mergers and acquisitions, litigation and arbitration, corporate finance, corporate restructuring, securities, banking, project finance, energy and infrastructure, antitrust, tax, intellectual property, life sciences
Key people	Eric McCrath (Chair)
Revenue	$1.15 billion (2020)
Profit per equity partner	$2.05 million (2020)
Date founded	1883
Founder	Alexander Morrison
Company type	Limited liability partnership
Website	www.mofo.com

Morrison & Foerster LLP (also known as MoFo) is an American multinational law firm headquartered in San Francisco, California, with 17 offices located throughout the United States, Asia, and Europe.

History

Alexander Francis Morrison

In 1883, Alexander Francis Morrison (1856–1921), an alumnus of the University of California, Berkeley, and Hastings College of the Law, founded the firm's oldest ancestor in San Francisco under the name O’Brien & Morrison.^[3] His aim was to practice "principally in the line of corporation business."^[4]

In 1891, Morrison formed a partnership with Constantine E.A. Foerster (1860–1898).^[3] However, Foerster died in 1898 at age 37 from tuberculosis.^[5] After his death, other attorneys came in as partners and the firm's name changed several times over the next two decades.

By late 1924, the firm of Morrison, Dunne & Brobeck had seven partners and eight associates.^[6] On November 29, 1924, everyone arrived at work to find on their desks a letter signed by partners Herman Phleger, William I. Brobeck and Peter F. Dunne which announced the "reorganization" of the firm.^[6] By "reorganization" they actually meant dissolution of the firm, effective December 31, 1924.^[7] Morrison's widow May was furious at the three men for wrecking the firm which she regarded as her late husband's legacy and prohibited them from using the Morrison name.^[8]

A 1996 history of the Brobeck firm claimed that Phleger had persuaded Brobeck and Dunne that the law firm would be more profitable if they ejected the four other partners, so the three of them suddenly fired and locked out the four other partners, who then had to break into the office with a fire axe to retrieve their files.^[8] However, this story may be apocryphal because the Morrison firm's files include documents showing that the attorneys had attempted to provide for the "orderly dissolution of the old firm", the transfer of its files, and the settlement of fees for pending matters.^[9]

The firm's attorneys organized two new law firms which began operations in January 1925: Dunne, Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison (later renamed Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison) and Morrison, Hohfeld, Foerster, Shuman & Clark.^[8] The "Foerster" of the latter firm was not the late Constantine E.A. Foerster, but his son Roland, who had joined the Morrison firm as an associate in 1916.^[10] May Morrison was affectionate towards the four founding partners of the latter firm and actively assisted them in creating a new firm to carry forward the legacy of the old one.^[11] They were the "favorites" of her late husband Alexander, whom she called "Aleck", and she thus referred to them as "Aleck's Boys".^[11]

Starting in the 1920s and 1930s, the firm developed a deep client roster, which brought stability to sustain the firm over the next three decades.^[12]

In the 1960s, a group of young partners—John Austin, Dick Archer, and Bob Raven—set out to reinvigorate the firm in response to stagnant revenue and changes in the business and social environment.^[13] The strategy, resulting from the so-called "Schroeder's meetings" because they were held at the San Francisco restaurant, included ideas for modernizing the practice of law.^[13] The partners replaced outmoded policies and insisted on budgets and operational plans. The firm started to recruit at law schools and began hiring women lawyers. In time, the firm rebuilt its litigation practice by training new associates on small bank cases.^[14]

In 1974, the firm expanded outside San Francisco and opened an office in Los Angeles to better meet the needs of longtime client Crocker National Bank.^[4]

Soon after, the firm expanded again, opening an office in Washington, D.C. in 1979 and its first non-U.S. office in London in 1980.^[15]

In 1987, the firm merged with New York-based litigation company Parker Auspitz and opened its Tokyo office.^[16]

The firm merged again in 1991, this time with Ciotti & Murashige.^[17] A decade later, Morrison & Foerster became one of the largest international law firms in Tokyo when it merged with Ito & Mitomi.^[18]

In 2003, Morrison & Foerster received their first 100% rating on HRC's Corporate Equality Index indicating they met all 7 of that year's criteria for having a positive record "toward lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender employees, consumers and investors".^[19]

In November 2013, the firm expanded its European presence by opening an office in Berlin.^[20] The following month, the German team advised Axel Springer, one of Europe's largest media companies, on its acquisition of N24 Media, Germany's largest independent producers of information.^[21]^[22]

In 2022, Morrison & Foerster was a founding member of the Legal Alliance for Reproductive Rights, a coalition of United States law firms offering free legal services to people seeking and providing abortions in the wake of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which overruled Roe v. Wade.^[23]

Clients

The firm was the lead bankruptcy counsel to Residential Capital. ResCap.^[24] and secured their chapter 11 plan.^[25]

In July 2013, Morrison & Foerster represented SoftBank in its $21.6 billion acquisition of a 78 percent stake in Sprint Nextel.^[26] According to The Wall Street Journal, the transaction was "one of the most complex and unusual deals in the annals of takeovers."^[27] The firm also represented SoftBank in Alibaba's U.S. IPO—the largest IPO in history.^[28]