Although Morgan Lewis's practice is widely spread in all senses, its core departments include real estate, litigation, corporate and IP/media. Its largest office is New York, which launched in 1996 and which now has around 330 lawyers.

In the same month Morgan Lewis raided the London office of Morrison & Foerster to launch its first UK employment capability.

Morgan Lewis has an established national presence on both coasts, as well as in Dallas and Chicago, and during the year it made a splash with the hire of Larry Gross, group general counsel of SunGard Data Systems. The hire underlined Morgan Lewis’s strength in IP and IT and its willingness to have big names on board.

However, the firm is among the least international firms in the top 20, with just 6 per cent of its 1,175 lawyers based outside the US. The firm has taken steps to address this and has been hiring aggressively in its international offices in Beijing, Brussels, Frankfurt, London, Paris and Tokyo.

The firm’s chairman, Francis Milone, is particularly keen to make Morgan Lewis an international force in his area of employment.

In Asia the firm announced a new Japanese joint venture in September 2005 with TMI Associates, a firm that also has an official relationship with Simmons & Simmons. Morgan Lewis-TMI has six partners and offers full-service legal advice.

And in February 2006 Morgan Lewis made its first foray into China, opening in Beijing.