The story
19th century
Morgan Lewis was founded in Philadelphia on March 10, 1873, by Civil War veteran Charles Eldridge Morgan Jr., who later served as the Philadelphia Law Academy's vice president, and Francis Draper Lewis, son of a wholesale dry goods merchant, and a first cousin of William Draper Lewis, the dean of the University of Pennsylvania Law School.
In 1883, Morgan & Lewis hired Morris Rex Bockius, who had graduated in June of that year with Master of Arts and Bachelor of Law degrees from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He became a partner 15 years after joining the firm, which he then led until his death, in 1939. The firm became Morgan, Lewis & Bockius in 1908, though it is still commonly referred to by its sobriquet, "Morgan Lewis."
The firm began representing the United Gas Improvement Company, later UGI, in 1882; it became the largest gas and electric utility company in the United States and remained a client of the firm well over a century later. From the early 20th century, Morgan, Lewis & Bockius clients have included Philadelphia's largest daily newspaper, The Philadelphia Bulletin; Pennsylvania's largest railroad, Baldwin Locomotive Works; Scott Paper; and several major banks and trust companies.
20th century
The firm has adhered to the Cravath System, a standardized compensation model used by many elite American BigLaw firms throughout the 20th century. Under this system, associate salaries and bonuses increase predictably with seniority and are typically aligned with industry benchmarks.
In 1963, Morgan Lewis hired its first female law associate, Gail McKnight Beckman, daughter of Pennsylvania's Deputy Secretary of Banking Irland McKnight Beckman and family psychology author Elizabeth B. Hurlock. In 1980, Stephanie Abramson became its first female law partner; she was later an adjunct professor of clinical law and director of law and business experiential classes at New York University School of Law.
21st century
Morgan, Lewis & Bockius originally held the domain name MLB.com, which it transferred to Major League Baseball in September 2000. MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred, elected in 2015, is an alumnus of the firm.
In 2012, Ted Cruz, a Morgan Lewis partner and head of the U.S. Supreme Court and Appellate Litigation practice, left Morgan Lewis upon becoming a United States Senator.
Jami McKeon, who joined the firm in 1981, became its first female chair in 2014. Re-elected in 2018, under her leadership, Morgan Lewis expanded into one of the largest law firms in the world, and received annual Gold Standard Certification from the Women in Law Empowerment Forum (WILEF). McKeon's term as chair concludes in September 2026.
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In 2015, Morgan Lewis filed a historic amicus brief for the definitive Supreme Court case of Obergefell v. Hodges, on behalf of 379 companies, including Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Walmart, JPMorgan Chase, and the New England Patriots, which argued "a business case for legalizing same-sex marriage across the country." The firm is an affiliate firm of the Minority Corporate Counsel Association (MCCA).
In February 2018, Morgan Lewis published findings of its investigation into sexual harassment at NPR, led by labor and employment partner Grace Speights. The findings precipitated the resignation of NPR's senior vice-president of news, Michael Oreskes. That April, former Morgan Lewis partner John Ring was confirmed by the U.S. Senate for a seat on the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), one of several firm partners who have served on the NLRB, including Harry Johnson and senior counsel Charles Cohen, and, later, Crystal Carey, confirmed as its general counsel in late 2025. Following his NLRB tenure, in 2023, Ring resumed practicing at Morgan Lewis.
In March 2019, Chai Feldblum, former Equal Employment Opportunity Commission member and lead drafter of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, became a partner of Morgan Lewis.
In November 2023, amid clashes at some universities following the start of the 2023 Israel-Hamas war; Morgan, Lewis & Bockius was among more than two dozen law firms that submitted a letter to 14 American law school deans, denouncing anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and racism, and advising those mentoring future law graduates of entrenched workplace policies against harassment or discrimination at their firms.
Morgan Lewis announced a strategic partnership, in December 2023, to furnish input and beta testing, aimed at helping to shape legal AI tools in development by Thomson Reuters.
Morgan Lewis unanimously elected the head of its employment practice, David A. McManus, to a five-year term as chair, in March 2026. The 30-year firm veteran assumed leadership on October 1, succeeding Jami McKeon.
From Wikipedia’s article on Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4