Debevoise & Plimpton

In 1931 Eli Whitney Debevoise and William Stevenson, two associates at the New York firm Davis Polk & Wardwell, set up their own partnership, first named Debevoise & Stevenson; Francis Plimpton joined two years later, and in 1936 Robert G. Page became the fourth name partner, with the firm renamed Debevoise, Stevenson, Plimpton & Page.⁠[1][2][1][1]

Early on the firm took work from large firms such as Davis Polk and Sullivan & Cromwell, and Phelps Dodge became its first corporate client; in 1932 it handled bankruptcy work for Kreuger & Toll, and it represented Southwestern Bell Telephone Company in one of the first public stock offerings under the new Securities Act of 1933. During the Depression it handled reorganizations of several railroads and utilities, and from 1937 it handled private securities placements for insurers such as John Hancock, which became a prominent part of its practice.⁠[1][1][1][1][1][1][1]

In 1943 the firm merged with Hatch, McLean, Root & Hinch, reaching 13 lawyers and 19 by the end of 1944; from 1947 it was known as Debevoise, Plimpton & McLean. In 1948 American Airlines, moving its headquarters from Washington to New York, hired the firm as general counsel and remained a client for decades.⁠[1][1][1][1][1]

In the early Cold War, partner Edward C. McLean defended former State Department official Alger Hiss, in what firm historian D. Bret Carlson called the most publicized matter ever handled by the firm. In 1948 Whittaker Chambers accused Hiss of passing government documents to the Soviet Union in the 1930s; Hiss was never convicted of espionage but was convicted of perjury, a conviction variously dated to 1949 and 1950.⁠[1][1][1][2]

After World War II the firm’s standing rose with its partners’ roles in government and business: Page became president of Phelps Dodge in 1947; Debevoise served as counsel to the U.S. high commissioner for West Germany from 1951 and as acting deputy high commissioner in 1952 and 1953; Stevenson served as U.S. ambassador to the Philippines and later as president of Oberlin College; and in the 1960s Presidents Kennedy and Johnson appointed Plimpton as an ambassador to the United Nations.⁠[1][1][1][1][1]

In 1956 the firm represented the Ford Foundation in the first public offering of Ford Motor Company stock, which firm historian George Lindsay called the largest financing to that time; Debevoise engineered Ford’s transition from a family property to a widely held public company. In 1959 the firm became general counsel to First National City Trust Company, which administered the pension fund of its affiliated bank, later renamed Citibank. It also represented the Rockefeller family in matters including the transition of the Rockefeller Institute into Rockefeller UniversityThe Rockefeller UniversityThe Rockefeller University is a biomedical research university on Manhattan’s Upper East Side in New York City, devoted mainly to scientific research and graduate education; it grew out of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research founded by John D. Rockefeller.Open the full entry. In 1964 it opened a Paris office.⁠[1][1][2][1][1][1]

In 1976 Barbara Robinson became the firm’s first woman partner. In 1980 the firm agreed to serve as Chrysler’s lead counsel: after the 1973 oil embargo American buyers turned to small, fuel-efficient foreign cars, and Chrysler lost market share, built up unsold inventory and accumulated more than 400 loans, while Congress passed a 1979 law guaranteeing loans to the company. The firm’s partners, helped by more than a quarter of its associates, guided Chrysler through the federal law, restructured its old loans and secured new ones, ultimately helping it avoid bankruptcy.⁠[1][1][1][1][1][1][1]

On its 50th anniversary in 1981 the firm was renamed Debevoise & Plimpton, and in 1982 it opened a Washington, D.C., office. Its lawyer headcount grew from 2 in 1931 to 102 in 1970, 147 in 1980 and 368 by the end of 1990.⁠[1][1][1]

In 1990 founder Eli Whitney Debevoise died at 90; he had worked at the firm until age 87.⁠[2][2]

During the early-1990s downturn the firm’s lawyer headcount fell from 397 in 1992 to 376 in 1993. It opened its first Asian office, in Hong Kong, in 1994, formally opened a Moscow office in December 1997 and closed its Los Angeles and Budapest offices. From 1994 it helped CompuServe with U.S. Patent and Trademark Office rules on online intellectual property, and it represented The New York Times, Time Inc. and Newsday in Tasini v. New York Times, a case on publishers’ rights to distribute work online.⁠[1][1][1][1][1][1]

In 1999 the firm advised on more than 135 mergers and acquisitions worth more than $435 billion, including Chrysler’s $38 billion merger with Germany’s Daimler-Benz. Based on that year’s gross revenue of $269 million, The American Lawyer ranked it the 37th-largest U.S. law firm, with revenue per lawyer of $670,000, 13th nationally.⁠[1][1][1][1]

Michael Blair became presiding partner in 2011. Under his leadership the firm opened a San Francisco office in 2021 to serve Bay Area technology and private equity clients, and over the eleven years through 2022 it doubled its annual revenue and increased net income by more than 150 percent.⁠[3][3][3]

In December 2019 Purdue Pharma disclosed in its bankruptcy that it had paid more than $17.5 million in legal fees on behalf of Sackler family members to more than a dozen law firms, including Debevoise. The firm’s senior chair, former Securities and Exchange Commission chair Mary Jo White, had advised Sackler family members on claims that OxyContin marketing contributed to the opioid crisis.⁠[4][4][5][5]

In April 2022 the firm announced that Blair, who had reached the partnership’s mandatory retirement age, would retire at year-end, with tax partner Peter Furci and real estate partner Nicole Mesard succeeding him and deputy presiding partner Bruce Yannett as presiding partner and deputy presiding partner; Yannett continued to chair the white collar and regulatory defense group, and Mary Jo White remained senior chair. The two took office on July 1, 2022; Furci joined the firm in 1995 and made partner in 2003, and Mesard joined in 2001 and made partner in 2008.⁠[3][3][3][3][6][6][6]

In May 2024 Columbia University used a group of mostly junior Debevoise lawyers, acting as “interim hearing officers,” to investigate student misconduct complaints connected to pro-Palestinian campus protests, including complaints filed by and against students; the protests had led to more than 100 arrests and several lawsuits. Neither Columbia nor Debevoise responded to requests for comment. At the time Debevoise had reported more than $1.3 billion in gross revenue for the prior year, ranking among the 40 largest U.S. law firms.⁠[5][5][5][5][5][5]

In June 2025 Debevoise’s partners voted to create a non-equity partner tier paid primarily in salary rather than profit shares. It had been one of the last law firms with a single tier of partners.⁠[7][7][7]

Debevoise’s London office grew revenue 41.2 percent to $267.9 million in 2025, after a 12.9 percent rise to $189.8 million in 2024.⁠[8][8]

As of October 2026 Debevoise & Plimpton has more than 900 lawyers in nine offices, in New York, Washington, San Francisco, London, Paris, Frankfurt, Luxembourg, Hong Kong and Shanghai, and in the past year advised on matters in more than 90 countries. In August 2026 it was again named to The American Lawyer’s U.S. A-List, the only firm to appear on the list every year since it was established.⁠[9][9][10][10][10][10][11]

Debevoise & Plimpton: Official website: https://www.debevoise.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[1]