Friends,

Murphy & McGonigle enjoyed another terrific year marked by growth in the depth and breadth of our capabilities. More importantly, 2018 was a great year of partnership with our clients.

We continued to expand our team by bringing in additional talent from the financial services world to further align our expertise with emerging areas important to our clients such as artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, blockchain technology and digital service offerings. As you can see from the credentials of our new hires in 2018 on the next page, we truly have maintained a high bar for talent here.

We launched a Commodities, Futures & Derivatives Practice in 2018 as a natural extension of our capabilities, leveraging expertise from our partners who formerly served as officials with the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). We continued to provide tools to our clients using technology developed in our Innovation Lab. We created the Blockchain Litigation Database, which tracks all blockchain and cryptocurrency-related civil litigation and enforcement matters in the U.S., and we launched the Blockchain Law Center (www.blockchainlawcenter.com), a resource for legal and regulatory developments in the world of blockchain technology. We ran our own high-level seminar in New York called CryptoLex, focusing on emerging legal issues impacting businesses leveraging blockchain technology. And we continued to contribute thought leadership as active participants in numerous industry organizations, including the Hyperledger Project and the Chamber of Digital Commerce.

Just as our clients consistently reflect Diversity and Inclusion in their organizations, we share that commitment. We sponsored SIFMA’s annual Women’s Leadership Forum, a platform for discussion of current topics impacting women in financial services. Our commitment to diversity and inclusion is paying off as 57% of the firm’s lateral hires in the past two years are diverse and all of our promoted attorneys in 2018 are diverse.

We were honored again this year to be selected by U.S. News & World Report and Best Lawyers® as a National Tier 1 Law Firm in the areas of Securities Litigation, Securities Regulation and Corporate Law. Only 25 law firms in the world received National Tier 1 recognition in all three of these categories.

We are grateful to our clients, who continue to place their trust and confidence in us by calling on our team to handle some of their most important and sensitive legal matters. We never lose sight of the fact that we must earn that trust and confidence every day.

On behalf of all the lawyers and staff at Murphy & McGonigle, we thank you for your continued support.

Best regards,

James A. Murphy
Chairman