Kirkland & Ellis Corporate Lab Partners & Projects
Partnering Companies
The Kirkland & Ellis Corporate Lab has partnered with many companies, including:
- Abercrombie & Fitch
- Academy Sports
- Accenture
- Allstate
- Baxter
- Barilla
- Booth New Venture Challenge
- Caterpillar
- General Mills
- Grub Hub
- Honeywell
- IBM
- Italian Trade Commission
- John Deere
- Kraft Heinz
- Koch Industries
- Meijer
- Microsoft
- Nike
- Northern Trust
- The Pritzker Organization
- Schneider National
- Schreiber Foods
- 3M
- Ulta Beauty
- Verizon
- Walmart
Representative Projects
The following is a list of some of the projects the Kirkland & Ellis Corporate Lab has undertaken in the past.
- Drafted model buy- and sell-side agreements based on broad analysis of technology-related contracts, with particular emphasis on terms related to intellectual property
- Surveyed corporate governance literature (e.g., on cumulative voting) and presented findings to the board of directors for use in shareholder meeting
- Developed ERISA training materials and presented to human resources department
- Reviewed and analyzed cloud computing agreement as compared to other cloud computing agreements (e.g., Rackspace.com, Amazon.com, and Google)
- Researched and analyzed the correlation between numerous corporate governance measures and company performance in the public company context in preparation for a shareholder meeting where the adoption of certain governance measures was proposed
- Worked with group of start-up companies to determine legal issues common to these companies and drafted memoranda setting forth general best practices
- Drafted letter to be sent to a state attorney general to advocate that the state’s disclosure laws should not apply to the participating company
- Conducted research on the adaptation of employment timekeeping best practices based on research and analysis of applicable legal issues
- Researched scope of Executive Order 13496’s employment notification requirements for government contracts and subcontracts as pertinent to specific industry practices
- Reviewed representative sample of customer contracts to determine the participating company’s potential risk exposure due to shifting legal obligations
- Developed contract negotiation strategies based on a comparative analysis of “gross negligence” standards under the laws of certain states
- Researched exceptions applicable to a company’s trade secret and financial information based on research of state public information statutes
- Researched whether the storage of confidential customer information on third-party computer servers would constitute disclosure for the purposes of client-customer non-disclosure agreements
- Researched which jurisdiction’s law and forum would be most favorable for a company’s form contracts based on research and analysis of the law surrounding numerous contractual terms, including limitation of liability, indemnification, choice of law, “best efforts” clauses, and set-off
- Revised and reformulated a client's form end-user license agreement
- Researched which of a client's subsidiaries would be the most appropriate entity to enter into end-user license agreements with customers
- Identified the most consumer-friendly terms among a client's various terms of use and consolidated them into one functioning agreement
- Analyzed various financial institutions' proposed contractual terms in response to public investment funds' requests for proposals relating to custodial services
- Analyzed a client's form easement agreements specific to several states and consolidated them into one form agreement applicable to all such states
- Researched corporate governance rules and guidelines promulgated by various exchanges and regulating bodies, and analyzed a client's comparative compliance with such rules and guidelines