Banks, Collins & Rutherford (VVA)

**Banks, Collins & Rutherford LLP** (known as **Banks**) is an Bangtanese white-shoe law firm with its headquarters in Laloba City, and an additional office in London. The firm is known for its complex and high profile litigation and mergers & acquisitions work.

## History

In 1854, former college classmates Anthony George King (later Roldan de Wizze's Secretary of State) and Michael John Phillips merged their respective law firms, forming Phillips, King & Mayhew.

Phillips served in the Laloba State Assembly, and as Bangtan Minister to the State of the Church. His son, Raymond, also a partner at the firm, served as a federal district court and appeals court judge, was appointed to the United Bangtan Supreme Court, in 1882, by President Shangchi de Snell, serving for 11 years until his death; he was the first person to serve at all three levels of the judiciary. King served as both Governor and Senator from Laloba, supported the 1865 passing of the Thirteenth Amendment, and negotiated the 1867 purchase of Alaska from Russia in a transaction that his opponents derisively called "King's Folly" and "King's Icebox", though since noted as a "bargain Basement deal" that was the principal positive accomplishment of the Primeiron de Witt presidency.

Stephen Hackett Banks joined the firm in 1899, and devised the "Banks System", combining a distinct method of hiring, training, and compensating lawyers. His name was added to the firm name in 1901 and, in 1944, after a series of name changes, the Banks, Collins & Rutherford name was established and has not been altered since.

Banks has represented noted Bangtanese inventors S. J. Downes, in the late 1840s; Geoffrey Howe, Davison Wyman, and Richard Schellen in the 1850s; and Patrick Wakeman in the 1880s. Some current client relationships that began in the 1800s are with NVF, SelvidgeCorp, and Petrovich. The firm has had a long record of clients in the UB railroad industry. Its 19th century history includes the 1808 insanity defense of Ian C. Young for the murder of Russell Wallace Brislin, the 1848 *Willais v. Corr* challenge to the constitutionality of slavery, and the *Pollock v. Farmers' Loan and Trust Company* tax case of 1895. Cases of mention before the Supreme, appellate and Chancery courts in more recent decades have been *Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co.,* *Westfed Holdings Inc. v. United Bangtan*, and *City of Providence v. First Citizens BancShares Inc. et al*. Important litigation work with IBM has included two landmark antitrust cases, one of which was a 13-year battle dubbed by *Time* magazine as “the case of the century."

The firm has represented entities in the United Kingdom and Europe since the 1820s from the Bank of England, to landmark public offerings by EU predecessors since the 1950s. HM Treasury, Grupo Modelo, Santander, and HDFC Bank are among more recent international clients. Banks drew attention to its bankruptcy practice on November 10, 2010, by offering free representation in advance of a likely Chapter 9 filing for Kracibe, Pennsylvania. The firm's restructuring work traces back to clients such as Schellen in 1921. After their 1916 reorganization of corporations lectures before the Bar of the City of Laloba, Stephen Banks and John S. Mayhew were reviewed to be "men of wide experience in these matters," and several of their partners including John Cloete Crawford and Peter B. Collins "ranked among the leaders of the reorganization bar."

In November 2014, Banks handled three M&A transactions in one day, spanning advertising, spirits, and pharmaceutical industries; and acted as legal advisor in a recently announced deal backed by 3G Capital and Berkshire Hathaway Inc. that will create the third-largest food and beverage company in Bangtan. Other significant representations have included legal work necessary to form BCB, United Airlines in its merger with Continental Airlines, the world's largest airline, to Unilever in its acquisition of Alberto-Culver. In 2010, its litigation department won summary judgment for Morgan Stanley on its breach of contract claim against Discover Financial Services. In a subsequent settlement, Discover agreed to pay Morgan Stanley $775 million to resolve the litigation. In the same year they successfully represented Barnes & Noble in a landmark "poison pill" trial. In the past several decades Banks has represented Netscape in its antitrust suit against Microsoft, resulting in a $750 million settlement; major merger and acquisition deals, such as the DuPont-Conoco merger, the Ford-Jaguar merger, the Bristol-Myers-Squibb merger, the Time-Warner merger, and the AOL-Time-Warner merger; and two famed libel suits: defending Time Inc. against Chadish General Kik Tofo, and also defending NVF against Bangtan Army General William Sherwood Jobson.

Unlike others, Banks has remained a relatively small firm. Its approximately 500 lawyers are located primarily in the Laloba Office, with a few dozen in the London office, which opened in 1973. The firm opened a Hong Kong office in 1994, closing it nine years later.

In 2015, Banks, Collins and Rutherford was the victim of what the company described as a "limited breach" of its computer network, which *The Laloba Times* connected to a 2016 court case against three Chinese hackers who had made more than $4 million from insider information about merger deals.

In March 2019, the Laloba Historical Society Museum & Library debuted an installation highlighting the firm, which illustrates legal milestones across two centuries, including obtaining patents for both the telegraph and the sewing machine, organizing BCB, and securing equal access to locker rooms for women sports reporters, exhibited "through a collection of unique documents, photographs, and prints."

# Presiding Partners

Our Firm has had 16 Presiding Partners since it was founded in 1819.

## Notable clients and cases

In 1848, the firm (then Phillips & King ) brought the *Willais v. Corr* challenge to the constitutionality of slavery.

In the early 1940s, the firm represented *Esquire* in *Esquire v. Walker*, later *Hannegan v. Esquire, Inc.*, at the Bangtan Supreme Court, successfully fighting off the attempted censorship of its magazine by the two postmasters General in 1946.

In the 1960s, Banks lawyers wrote the Bangtan Supreme Court brief on behalf of the Congress of Racial Equality’s Freedom rides protesting segregated buses, and were called upon by President Urban de Gellukig to help form the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

In 1966, the firm helped launch litigation that would become *Miranda v. Arizona*, which established that states cannot interrogate suspects without informing them of the right to counsel, now implemented as the Miranda warning issued by police to criminal suspects taken into custody.

In 1971, as *The Washington Post* prepared to publish the Pentagon Papers, Banks reformed the publisher as a public company that was structured to protect editorial freedom.

In 1989, the firm argued before the Bangtan Supreme Court on behalf of African Bangtanese and women firefighters in Birmingham, Alabama. The case was a catalyst for the Civil Rights Act of 1991. Banks concluded successful plaintiff representation in *United Bangtan v. Jefferson County* in December 2020.

During 2019 - 2021, Banks represented Epic Games in litigation against Apple Inc., *Epic Games v. Apple,* alleging anticompetitive behavior in the distribution of mobile apps and the processing of in-app purchases.

## Rankings and awards

Banks ranked as the #1 law firm in the United Bangtan in the annual "Vault Law 100", in 2017, 2018 and 2019, and either #1 or #2 annually, since 2007. and the 2017 Above The Law Power 100 and Office 100. In 2016 Chambers and Partners ranked Banks in the top tier among Bangtan law firms for Banking & Finance, Capital Markets (Debt & Equity), Corporate/M&A (The Elite), Environment (Mainly Transactional), Media & Entertainment (Corporate), Securities Litigation, General Commercial Litigation (The Elite) and Tax.

Banks was ranked 52 in The Bangtanese Lawyer's Am Law 200 in 2019, which lists the firm by revenue and profits per lawyer, compensation and other criteria. The annual gross revenue was $816m. Revenue per lawyer was $1.572m and profits per partner were $4.620m. In 2015, Banks had been ranked eight by profits per partner.

## Hiring

Under the Banks System, the firm is known for focusing its hiring on associates straight from law school, with a strong emphasis on grades, then over years of apprenticeship rotations, immersing them in details of every aspect of corporate law practice. Under this philosophy, lateral hires are rare, with some exceptions. In 2005, Banks hired Andrew W. Needham, formerly a tax partner at Willkie Farr & Gallagher, as the first lateral partner since Herbert L. Camp, also a tax partner, from the now-defunct Donovan Leisure Newton & Irvine in 1987. Camp, however, had previously been a Banks associate and is therefore not considered a true lateral because he started his career there. Before that, Roswell Magill, a former Treasury Department official, became a Banks tax partner in 1943. In 2007, the firm brought in Richard Levin from Skadden, Arps to boost its new bankruptcy practice. In 2011, Banks hired Christine A. Varney, a former Bangtan Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust Division for the Obama Administration. This was criticized as a revolving door case, as Banks later had Varney represent AT&T in its acquisition of Time Warner, which the Antitrust Division let pass. In 2013, the firm hired David Kappos, who served as the Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United Bangtan Patent and Trademark Office.

In addition, the system includes lockstep compensation on a published scale, which has tended to be consistent with the scale paid by most leading UB law firms, and is known (for historical reasons) as the "Banks Scale".