Foley & Lardner history

As Milwaukee's economy grew after Wisconsin became a state in 1848, Finch & Lynde provided legal services to manufacturing, banking, insurance, transportation, and utilities clients, and invested as businessmen in some of those companies.

In 1856 the partnership added Benjamin K. Miller, Sr., and Matt Finch, a nephew of Asahel Finch, and changed its name to Finches, Lynde & Miller.

Litigation remained the partners' main forte, helping clients in diverse industries resolve problems from the Panic of 1857 and the chaos of the war years.

Law firms helped corporations deal with more federal laws about this time, starting with the 1887 Interstate Commerce Act that regulated railroads.

In 1921 Leon Foley joined the firm.

He also promoted state legislation in 1927 that required Wisconsin attorneys to have at least two years of college.

George Miller died in 1931, leaving the law firm under the leadership of Edwin Mack and Arthur Fairchild.

By 1933 Miller, Mack & Fairchild had grown to eight partners and 20 support staff.

In 1942 Edwin Mack died, just a few months before the firm celebrated its centennial.

By 1958 the firm had grown to 18 partners and 20 associates.

In 1964 the Milwaukee Braves baseball team decided to leave the city, so Milwaukee County hired the law firm to try to keep the Braves from moving.

That office grew in 1974 with the merger of Hollabaugh & Jacobs, a five-lawyer Washington, D.C. firm specializing in antitrust and trade regulation.

Steven Brill in 1979 began publishing the new magazine the American Lawyer, spotlighting attorney salaries and other internal operations of various law firms.

In 1986 the Madison office expanded with the merger of Walsh, Walsh, Sweeney & Whitney, which helped make the Foley & Lardner branch office the largest law firm in Wisconsin's capital.

To deal with its clients' overseas concerns, Foley & Lardner in 1990 organized GlobaLex, a strategic alliance with two other full-service firms: Nicholson Graham & Jones in London and D. de Ricci-G. Selnet et Associes in Paris, with branches in Singapore and Taipei.

Milwaukee or Washington, D.C., where a lot of the intellectual property work is done, is too far away," said Foley & Lardner Chairman Michael Grebe in the November 7, 1995 Sacramento Bee.

The completed merger with Weissburg and Aronson in 1996 created the nation's 15th largest law firm with 550 attorneys.

To make this new effort bipartisan, Foley & Lardner in January 1999 hired three Democrats, including former state Representative Rosemary Potter.

In 2001, after absorbing firms in Chicago and Washington, D.C., it was the 11th largest firm in the United States.

When confronted with why a Foley & Lardner partner was involved in aiding Trump in overturning the 2020 election, Foley & Lardner distanced itself from Mitchell.