Kirkland & Ellis Brand Guidelines: A 1909 Chicago Partnership, Two Surnames & an Ampersand

Two founders, two later names on the door.

Kirkland & Ellis traces its start to Chicago in 1909, when two lawyers, Stuart G. Shepard and Robert R. McCormick, formed a partnership, according to English Wikipedia. McCormick was a grandson of Joseph Medill, founder of the Chicago Tribune; he became president of the Tribune Company in 1914 and its sole publisher in 1925. Wikipedia’s article on Weymouth Kirkland gives a slightly different start: a firm called Shepard, McCormick & Thomason, founded by McCormick in 1908.

The two names the firm carries today belong to lawyers who arrived later. Weymouth Kirkland and his associate Howard Ellis joined in 1915, according to the firm’s Wikipedia article; the Kirkland biography dates his arrival to 1914. Kirkland, a trial lawyer, served as chief counsel to the Tribune and other newspapers in free-speech and defamation cases, including Near v. Minnesota.

The name changed several times on the way. The firm soon became McCormick, Kirkland, Patterson & Fleming; in 1936 Kirkland became its first named partner, as Kirkland, Fleming, Green, Martin & Ellis; and in 1958 it became Kirkland, Ellis, Hodson, Chaffetz and Masters, according to the Weymouth Kirkland article. Over time the long string was cut down to the two surnames joined by an ampersand.

One of the later names was Hammond Chaffetz, a trial lawyer hired from the U.S. Department of Justice in 1938. English Wikipedia says he spent six decades at the firm, during which it grew to about 780 lawyers and became one of the 30 largest in the country.

Private equity, restructuring and trial work.

Kirkland & Ellis opened its London office in 1994, and in 2024 added an office in Frankfurt, according to English Wikipedia, which counts 20 offices in six countries. The same article says the firm’s growth in 2024 was driven by its private equity, litigation and M&A practices.

Private equity sits close to the centre of that record. Vault ranked Kirkland & Ellis the number-one firm in the United States for private equity and for restructuring in 2018, and the most prestigious firm in Chicago that year, Wikipedia says, and The American Lawyer named it Law Firm of the Year for 2018. In The American Lawyer’s 2024 Am Law 200 it ranked first by gross revenue, according to the same article.

The firm continues to hire from rivals in that field. On 6 November 2026 Kirkland & Ellis announced that a 40-lawyer team from Weil, Gotshal & Manges, with six partners in private equity, M&A and debt finance, would join it in January 2027, Nonbillable reported that day; the move was announced but not yet completed at the time of writing. The team’s leader had co-headed Weil’s US private equity practice and led its Boston office, the report said, and Weil’s leadership had recommended winding down that firm the week before.

The firm marked a record in 2024, when it elevated 151 lawyers to partner, according to English Wikipedia, and in 2025 it expanded its Boston office with a group of M&A partners and associates. Its alumni include a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court and several former attorneys general; Wikipedia counts more than two dozen lawyers who resigned from the firm on appointment to government posts.

The firm also endows professorships in its name at four law schools: Harvard, Northwestern, Michigan and the University of Chicago, Wikipedia says.

Two episodes are part of its recent record. In 2023 the firm was named as a defendant in a racketeering suit filed in Texas over fees in several Chapter 11 cases; a federal judge dismissed it, ruling that the plaintiff lacked standing, according to English Wikipedia. In April 2025 Kirkland & Ellis was one of nine large firms that reached agreements with the Trump administration to commit pro bono work, as Above the Law recalled in November 2026.

How large US firms present themselves.

Large American law firms tend to present themselves with restraint. Many are named after founding or senior partners, and their names are often set as sober wordmarks: a serif with a long institutional pedigree, or a plain grotesque sans, usually in a single colour. Navy, near-black and white are common choices, with an occasional accent kept for links and headings rather than for decoration. Long partnership titles are frequently cut down over the decades to two surnames joined by an ampersand, or to a single surname used in conversation.

Their websites are built around how clients and recruits search. Practice-area and industry pages sit near the top, alongside a directory of lawyer biographies, each with a headshot, admissions, education and representative work. Latham & Watkins, for example, organises its main menu under People, Capabilities, Achievements, Insights and Global Citizenship, and lists every office by city on its About Us page.

Publishing is a large part of the presentation. Firms issue client alerts on new laws and rulings, along with articles, podcasts and webcasts grouped under headings such as insights or thought leadership. Many also publish pro bono reports, figures on community service and reports on diversity and inclusion, and some set out environmental commitments for their offices.

Recruiting pages form a separate register, written for law students and junior lawyers: summer associate programmes, training, office life and alumni networks. Across all of these pages the visual system usually stays quiet, so that the firm’s name, its people and its record of work carry the identity. The guides in this series look at how individual firms use those conventions, and where their histories and names differ.

Five names cut down to two.

The identity of Kirkland & Ellis is, first of all, its name. It is made of partners’ surnames, and its history shows how such a name is edited over time: from Shepard, McCormick & Thomason, through a five-surname title in 1936 and another in 1958, to the two names that remain. Neither founder appears in it; the surnames are those of the trial lawyer who acted for the Tribune and the associate who joined with him.

The shortening matters for design. A name of two surnames and an ampersand can be set as a single short line, which suits small sizes on letterheads and documents.

The 1958 title is the last long version recorded in the Weymouth Kirkland article, which says that today the firm is known simply as Kirkland & Ellis.

The palette here is our own interpretation: a navy and a near-black ink with a cool white and a slate grey.

For a design guide, Kirkland & Ellis shows how a partnership name can be cut back to two words without losing its history. Compare Latham & Watkins, the other firm often ranked beside it by revenue, and Skadden, another large US firm in this series. For this guide we use navy, ink, white and slate with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Kirkland & Ellis’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.