Covington & Burling LLP is an American multinational law firm. Known as a white shoe law firm, the firm is headquartered in Washington, D.C. and advises clients on transactional, litigation, regulatory, and public policy matters. In 2021, Vault.com ranked Covington & Burling as the #1 law firm in Washington, D.C. The firm has additional offices in Beijing, Brussels, Frankfurt, Dubai, Johannesburg, London, Los Angeles, New York, Palo Alto, San Francisco, Seoul, and Shanghai. History Judge J. Harry Covington and Edward B. Burling founded Covington & Burling in Washington, DC, on January 1, 1919. In 1988, Covington opened a London office, followed by a Brussels office in 1990. In 1999, Covington merged with a 60-lawyer New York firm called Howard, Smith & Levin and also opened its first West Coast office in San Francisco. In 2008, Covington entered into a strategic alliance with Institution Quraysh for Law & Policy (iQ), a Qatar-based transnational law firm and think-tank, for the joint provision of legal and consulting services in the Middle East. As of mid-2009, both firms share the same London office premises. Pro bono Covington's pro bono work focuses on providing legal services to people in local communities. Attorneys at the firm can participate in a six-month rotation program and work at each of three DC-based legal service organizations: Neighborhood Legal Services Program, the Children's Law Center and Bread for the City. Covington's pro bono work includes representation in Buckley v. Valeo, Griffin v. Illinois, and Korematsu v. United States. However, the firm's pro bono program encompasses a range of areas, including freedom of expression and religion; civil rights and civil liberties; gay rights; family law; education; landlord/tenant; homelessness; employment; criminal and court-appointed cases; police misconduct; environmental law; fairness in government procurements and grants; intellectual property; non-profit incorporation and tax. They supported the District of Columbia in District of Columbia v. Heller which argues that the District's ban on the possession of handguns and its storage provisions for other firearms in the home is not implicated by the Second Amendment Representation of Guantanamo Bay inmates Attorneys at Covington & Burling have been Guantanamo Bay attorneys for Ahmed al-Ghailani fifteen Yemenis, one Pakistani, and one Algerian being held at Guantanamo Bay. The firm obtained favorable rulings that detainees have rights under the Fifth Amendment and the Geneva Conventions. The court ruled in March 2005 that the government could not transfer detainees from Guantanamo