Hogan & Hartson LLP. history

That firm was itself the product of mergers involving several firms founded in different regions of Germany, the earliest of which was established in Hamburg in 1884.

Lovells owed its existence to a number of legal businesses established in the UK and Continental Europe in the 19th and 20th Centuries, principal among which was Lovell, White & King, founded in London by John Spencer Lovell in 1899.

In 1902 he received his LL.B. from Georgetown University, was admitted to the District of Columbia Bar, and thus began his long career as a lawyer.

1904: Frank Hogan founds the firm in Washington, D.C.

He also wrote articles for legal journals and in 1912 began serving as the advisory editor of the Georgetown Law Journal.

For example, Congress gained the authority to tax incomes with ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment in 1913.

Such cases earned Hogan a national reputation as the most famous trial lawyer in the country and attracted Nelson T. Hartson, former solicitor of internal revenue, to the firm in 1925 to establish a business practice to complement the firm's established trial practice.

1938: The partnership is renamed Hogan & Hartson.

The 1940 directory listed Liberty Mutual Insurance Company, Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), and Crosley Radio Corporation as other clients of Hogan & Hartson.

In 1966 Lovell, White & King merged with Haslewoods, a small firm with adjacent offices in Serjeants’ Inn which traced its pedigree to William Haslewood, the trusted adviser and executor of Admiral Lord Nelson in the early 19th Century.

Lawyer and consumer activist Ralph Nader in 1969 criticized the growing power of corporate law firms.

1970: The firm begins its unique pro bono Community Services Department.

Admitted to the bar in 1971, Peter Raue begins working at Finkelnburg Stiewe.

Joseph C. Goulden, in his 1972 book about large Washington, D.C., law firms, estimated that in the previous decade the number of lawyers had increased 25 percent.

According to Goulden, the capital had "less than one-half percent of the United States population, and almost five percent of the lawyers." As part of this trend, Hogan & Hartson more than doubled its number of lawyers to reach 76 in 1973.

In 1975, he establishes his own law firm at Meinekestraße 13.

In 1976 Hogan & Hartson was praised in Verdicts on Lawyers for having "identified full-time pro bono partners and associates to coordinate the firm's public interest work." Such an example was then and continued to be rather unusual in large corporate law firms.

Since 1979, when Odle became chairman, Hogan & Hartson had grown from one to 18 offices worldwide and more than quadrupled its number of lawyers to over 800.

The beginning of a major evolutionary shift for Hogan & Hartson came in 1984 with the opening of the firm's first office outside of the district.

1985: The firm grows in the Washington, D.C. area with a new office in McLean, Virginia.

1987: The firm moves its Washington, D.C., office to Columbia Square in the Metro Center.

Hogan & Hartson in 1988 became the first large out-of-town law firm to establish a branch office in Baltimore.

By 1991, other new offices had been established in Warsaw, Paris, and Brussels.

Started in 1994, the firm’s Moscow office illustrated Hogan & Hartson’s role in the globalized economy.

Under communism, local governments avoided debt, but by 1996 some municipalities were beginning to see the advantages of long-term bonds to help pay for badly needed infrastructure such as roads, water systems, and airports.

Its New York City office was started in 1998.

The firm's gross revenue increased 22.1 percent from 1999, when it was ranked number 40.

Lovells was formed in 2000 when Lovell White Durrant merged with a leading German firm, Boesebeck Droste.

2001: Berlin office started in January under name of Hogan & Hartson Raue.

By April 2010, the firm had 26 offices in 12 countries on four continents.