California

With a network of international and domestic offices, WilmerHale has built a reputation as a global powerhouse. Nationally, the firm’s original mainstay in Boston continues to secure near-unanimous recognition in litigation, and the New York, DC and California offices have further bolstered the firm’s top-tier standing. It is lauded for its litigation capabilities nationwide, particularly antitrust, white-collar, securities and appellate, as well as intellectual property, one of the firm’s most notable practices. The firm has also increasingly developed a name for itself in the international arbitration space as well. “Wilmer is one of the foundational groups in the business,” insists a peer. “A lot of this is through its London office but it is also really gathering strength in the US as well. Keep an eye on this.” Further amplifying the firm’s service offerings, WilmerHale litigators continue to demonstrate a keen prowess with trials, with several key courtroom wins on display from practitioners in several offices and across varied practice areas.
     In the firm’s famed IP practice, Boston-based but nationally recognized Bill Lee needs no introduction; he continues to be universally regarded as a celebrity of the patent litigation community. “I tried two Qualcomm cases against him,” testifies a former opponent. “Bill is quite senior but still very active and still very good.” While Lee made headlines as counsel for Apple in the “smartphone wars” litigation, the baton for that client has effectively been passed to another Boston-based patent trial star, Joseph Mueller, tipped by many peers to be Lee’s successor. Mueller triumphed for Apple in a billion-dollar dispute with an entity that was alleged that Apple wrongly acquired its trade secrets from a for pulse oximetry technology incorporated into the Apple Watch. The court decided for the client in a May 2023 decision, although a retrial is scheduled for November 2024. “Joe Mueller has the trial skills and IP know-how to get Bill Lee’s blessing for sure,” asserts a peer. In another high-profile patent win, DC’s Greg Lantier won a sweeping victory for Dropbox in the company’s first-ever trial in May 2023, when a federal jury found all patents not infringed and invalid in a complex patent-infringement case. 
     The firm’s unassailable IP roster is bookended on the West Coast by Sonal Mehta, one of the youngest and most championed stars of the Bay Area/Silicon Valley patent community. Mehta, who earned her stripes at celebrated (but now defunct) San Francisco litigation boutique Durie Tangri, has been lead counsel on several groundbreaking patent actions in the past several years and as of late has become a go-to for social-media juggernaut Meta – corporate parent of household names Facebook and Instagram – in several cases involving issues of antitrust, privacy and breach-of-contract, sometimes involving an intersection of any of these three. “Sonal’s practice is tailor made for the Bay Area trendy tech titans,” quips a peer. Mehta added another social media household name to her arsenal of clients with her defense of X (formerly Twitter) in a patent-infringement suit, valued at $600 million and brought by an entity that purchased patents related to online sharing of user-created videos, from a company that had originally filed a case. The initial claims allege that, following talks with X executives about partnering, X instead developed its own products that infringed.

     Beyond IP litigation, Wilmer boasts trial firepower in the securities and commercial space as well, with New York’s Hallie Levin being a frequent mention as a standout in these capacities. Levin is a fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers and put her courtroom acuity on display when she led a team (which included Peter Neiman) that secured a victory for T-Mobile following a five-day bench trial in Delaware Chancery Court in August 2021. The Vice Chancellor granted T-Mobile’s request to enjoin Cox Communications from partnering with any mobile network operator other than T-Mobile to provide wholesale wireless services to Cox.