Sullivan & Cromwell Brand Guidelines: Wall Street Since 1879, a Berlin Closure & 14 Offices

A trial lawyer, a former bookkeeper and a corner opposite the Exchange.

Sullivan & Cromwell was founded in New York in 1879 by Algernon Sydney Sullivan and William Nelson Cromwell, both the firm’s own history page and the International Directory of Company Histories say. The directory describes Sullivan as the middle-aged senior partner, a trial lawyer, and Cromwell as a younger former bookkeeper whom Sullivan had helped to attend law school. The firm set up its offices at the corner of Broad and Wall Streets, opposite the New York Stock Exchange.

Its work soon turned from the courtroom to business. The directory says the early practice was largely about rescuing companies in difficulty, forming new companies, merging existing ones into larger groups and raising finance, much of it from the foreign investors whose capital American industry then relied on. The firm’s website names two early landmarks: the formation of the Edison General Electric Company in 1882 and of United States Steel Corporation in 1901. By 1900, the directory says, the firm had 14 lawyers, working four to a room around the library.

Reorganisation became a speciality. The directory describes the “Cromwell Plan,” an orderly liquidation and reorganisation designed to hold off creditors during market panics until conditions recovered. Cromwell also took on foreign clients; the firm’s history page says he was instrumental in paving the way toward the construction of the Panama Canal. By 1911 the firm had an office in Paris, according to the directory.

Indentures, a Berlin office and a closure.

In the 1920s, the directory says, the firm’s core business was drafting the indentures under which banks lent to companies and foreign governments, and between 1924 and 1931 it handled dozens of securities issues for European borrowers, especially in Germany. By the end of 1928 it had offices in Paris, Berlin and Buenos Aires. It moved to larger quarters at 48 Wall Street in 1929 and hired its first four women lawyers in 1930. In the same period it revived its trial practice under Harlan Fiske Stone, who later became chief justice of the United States, the directory says. The firm says it prepared the first major registration statement under the Securities Act of 1933.

The 1930s brought the firm’s most difficult chapter. Sullivan & Cromwell closed its Berlin office in 1935, but its managing partner of the time was criticised, both then and after the Second World War, for trying to maintain good relations with the Nazi regime in order to serve the firm’s clients, the International Directory of Company Histories says. Those clients, according to the directory, included General Aniline & Film, the largest subsidiary in the Western Hemisphere of the German chemical cartel I.G. Farben, which used slave labour during the war. The firm’s Paris office was closed during the war and reopened in 1962, its website says.

After the war the practice widened. The directory records an antitrust defence practice in the 1950s, a separate banking practice from 1968 and a mergers and acquisitions group formed in 1980. The firm says it became the first New York firm to set up a permanent visiting-lawyer programme for lawyers from outside the United States, which it says now has more than 440 alumni in 48 countries. To settle a class action, it agreed in 1977 to recruit, hire and pay women lawyers on the same basis as men, the directory says, citing The New York Times; it appointed its first woman partner in 1982.

How large US law 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.

Fourteen offices, opened one at a time.

The firm moved its headquarters to 125 Broad Street, overlooking New York Harbor, in 1979, the directory says, and it is still the New York address on the firm’s website. From there the network grew. The firm’s history page lists London in 1972, Washington in 1977, Melbourne in 1983, Los Angeles in 1984, Tokyo in 1987, Hong Kong in 1992, Frankfurt in 1995, Beijing in 1999, Palo Alto in 2000, Sydney in 2001, Brussels in 2017 and Abu Dhabi in 2026; its offices page now lists 14 offices, from New York and Paris to Melbourne and Tokyo.

The firm presents that growth as organic. Its website says it built its international network not by acquiring other firms or hiring large numbers of lateral lawyers, but by opening offices and staffing them with lawyers who have spent their careers at the firm; the directory noted a long-standing policy of not recruiting partners from other firms in the late 1990s. Its homepage in November 2026 led with client highlights, partner news and a Legal Business Awards title, “Global London Law Firm of the Year,” which the firm reported in September 2026.

The identity is the partnership itself: two surnames joined by an ampersand, usually shortened to “S&C” in the firm’s own headlines, and presented in the plain, text-led manner of a Wall Street firm.

For a design guide, Sullivan & Cromwell shows how a nineteenth-century name can stay unchanged while the firm around it spreads across continents. Compare Cravath and Davis Polk, two other long-established New York firms. For this guide we use a ledger green, warm paper and a brass with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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