Squire Sanders operates as a single global partnership, which ensures client accountability and the seamless delivery of uniformly high quality legal services throughout the world. Our lawyers come from many countries and cultures, are licensed to practice in both common law and civil law jurisdictions, and communicate with clients in their native languages. Today, Squire Sanders remains committed to the fundamental principles ordained by its founders: to serve clients effectively and maintain the professional standards that distinguish both the firm and its people.

Squire Sanders is organized around four major practice areas: advocacy, business, capital markets and regulated industries. Within these practice areas, our work can be divided into numerous areas of specialization, including banking, bankruptcy and restructuring, biotechnology and pharmaceuticals, communications, competition law, converging technologies, corporate, energy, environmental, health care, intellectual property, international dispute resolution, labor and employment, litigation, mergers and acquisitions, privatizations, project finance, real estate, securities and taxation.

Our client base spans the world and encompasses both the public and private sectors. In the private sector, our clients include publicly and privately held companies to which we provide the full scope of legal and business counseling required to implement successful growth strategies. In the public sector, we have extensive experience counseling governments on the privatization of whole industries and on the establishment of regulatory systems under which newly formed private businesses operate in a competitive environment. We also have one of the strongest public finance practices in existence. While growing to meet the demands of a worldwide economy, a commitment to serving clients locally has remained an integral component of the firm’s makeup since its founding in the late 19^th century.

In 1890, Andrew Squire, Judge William B. Sanders and James H. Dempsey formed a law firm in Cleveland, Ohio that would gain a reputation as counsel for leading corporations in the newly industrialized city. By 1929, Squire Sanders was Cleveland and Ohio’s preeminent law firm. With 36 lawyers it was also the largest and busiest.

Seeing the practice of law rapidly changing and in order to continue to serve clients growing outside of Cleveland, Squire Sanders realized the need for expansion. That expansion came through mergers with smaller but prominent law firms in Cleveland and elsewhere. The opening of the firm’s Washington office in 1971 came about through one of those mergers and paved the way for the establishment of a federal regulatory, aviation and international trade practice.

The firm’s first non-US office opened in 1974 in Brussels, Belgium. A year later came expansion in Ohio with the creation of the Columbus office. Serving at first as an outpost for the Cleveland office, the Columbus office grew rapidly as companies and other law firms expanded across Ohio.

The city of Phoenix’s rapid growth in real estate and business development created a solid foundation for the firm, which expanded there in 1979. And client demands both nationally and internationally brought the creation of the New York office in 1982.

As it had in the past, Squire Sanders continued to be shaped by the events of the time. In the 1990s, after the opening of Central and Eastern Europe, the firm established offices in these new and emerging markets serving governments and investors in privatization and investment matters. Squire Sanders’ worldwide presence continued with the opening of offices in Asia in the late 1990s.

Squire Sanders looked to the US West Coast to expand its intellectual property and technology areas. By 2000, the firm found a partner as it combined practices with the Los Angeles, Palo Alto, San Francisco, Beijing and Tokyo offices of the esteemed Graham & James LLP. In 2004, we further solidified our presence in Asia with the opening of our office in Shanghai. In 2005, we complemented our existing strong position in Central Europe by opening our office in Warsaw and strengthened our Latin American practice through combining practices with Steel Hector & Davis LLP, one of the most respected firms in Florida. Through the Steel Hector combination, Squire Sanders added offices in Tallahassee and West Palm Beach, as well as in Caracas, Venezuela and Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Shortly thereafter, Squire Sanders opened its office in Frankfurt and expanded its capabilities in London with the arrival of lawyers from a highly respected law firm. Today Squire Sanders offers a global footprint matched by few firms in the world.  

Today, with 32 worldwide offices - our legal portrait is different than the one seen in 1890. However, the spirit of the founders’ zest for the law as well as their emphasis on quality, integrity, dedication to clients, loyalty and community service, remains throughout the firm.