Firm Founders - Lloyd Cutler, Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr LLP

Lloyd N. Cutler (1917–2005) graduated from Yale Law School in 1939, where he was editor-in-chief of the Yale Law Journal. He clerked for the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit before entering private practice, where he met his future law partner, John Pickering.

Near the outbreak of World War II, Mr. Cutler moved to Washington DC, where he worked at the Department of Justice and helped prosecute eight Nazi saboteurs captured in New York after coming to the United States in a submarine.

In 1962, he and Mr. Pickering persuaded fellow lawyer Richard Wilmer to join them in forming Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering (now the global firm of WilmerHale). The firm pledged to devote 10% of its total effort to uncompensated work for the disadvantaged and significant social causes.

The following year, at the behest of President John F. Kennedy, Mr. Cutler served as a leading force in creating the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. He went on to serve as a member of the organization’s Executive Committee until 1987.

In 1983, Mr. Cutler co-founded the Southern Africa Legal Services and Legal Education Project to aid South African lawyers who fought to implement the rule of law during apartheid. Nelson Mandela personally thanked the firm for its dedication to this cause with a gift of handwritten notes from his 1963–1964 trial for treason and the night before he heard the sentence on his life. In 2009, WilmerHale celebrated the official opening of its Nelson Mandela Manuscript Exhibit, which resides in the firm’s DC office in a room named for Mr. Cutler.

During the span of his career, Mr. Cutler argued nine times before the US Supreme Court, and made major contributions to bankruptcy law, administrative law, securities law, auto safety, drug safety, and our understanding of the workings of our three branches of government. Equally impressive, his public career included prominent assignments from six US presidents.

Mr. Cutler was a prolific writer on the separation of powers, international relations, war powers, disarmament, human rights, corporate governance, the judicial confirmation process and many other topics. He was also a director of The Metropolitan Opera and The Phillips Collection.

Today, WilmerHale maintains a steadfast commitment to pro bono representation and public service, and believes in an inherent obligation to ensure equal access to justice for underserved communities around the world.