McDermott Will & Schulte
US-based international law firm
McDermott Will & Schulte (formerly McDermott Will & Emery) is an international law firm with a diversified corporate practice. It represents commercial, industrial, and financial enterprises.
History
Chicago lawyers Edward H. McDermott and William M. Emery founded the firm in 1934. They were initially focused as a tax law firm, and a corporate department was established in 1941 when Howard A. Will joined the firm. As the century progressed, the firm added capabilities across the legal spectrum, eventually opening eight more offices. By 1984, the firm had amassed one hundred fifty lawyers. Over the ensuing twenty years, the firm grew; in 2004, McDermott numbered over one thousand lawyers.
In November 2023, amid a wave of protests calling for a ceasefire in the Gaza War at elite U.S. law schools, McDermott Will & Emery was among a group of major law firms that sent a letter to top law school deans warning them that an escalation in incidents targeting Jewish students would have corporate hiring consequences:We look to you to ensure your students who hope to join our firms after graduation are prepared to be an active part of workplace communities that have zero tolerance policies for any form of discrimination or harassment, much less the kind that has been taking place on some law school campuses.On August 1, 2025, the firm merged with Schulte Roth & Zabel, forming a new firm under the name McDermott Will & Schulte.
In November 2025, McDermott Will & Schulte embarked on assessing private equity investment into the firm's operations, by reshaping its practice with a management service organization (MSO).
Organization
McDermott has more than 1,750 lawyers across more than 20 offices in the United States and Europe.
The public source identifies “McDermott Will & Schulte” as uS-based international law firm. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around McDermott, Will and Schulte.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1915092. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1934, 1941, 1984 and 2004.
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This entry incorporates text from “McDermott Will & Schulte” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.