Our History

Newton D. Baker parlayed a chance meeting into a job at a Cleveland law firm in 1899. By 1912, he was mayor, and Thomas L. Sidlo and Joseph C. Hostetler served in his administration. As his second term ended, he invited them to join him in establishing a law firm.

Baker was beloved as mayor and became a political figure at the federal level as well. He earned the lasting appreciation of President Woodrow Wilson when he testified in support of Lewis Brandeis’ somewhat controversial nomination to the Supreme Court. Shortly thereafter, Wilson chose him to serve as his secretary of war, so the first five years of Baker, Hostetler & Sidlo proceeded largely without the firm’s most distinguished partner.

We grew quickly in our early years and established enduring client relationships – The Plain Dealer has been with us since 1917 – but the Great Depression and other challenges took their toll: Baker died suddenly in 1937, and Sidlo retired in 1938. Given the lasting effects of the economic downturn, our growth slowed through the decade, although important new relationships were begun, including with the world-renowned Cleveland Clinic.

Our longtime defense of Major League Baseball’s antitrust exemption continued as we grew. The arrival of Norman A. Sugarman, a chief architect of the 1954 Internal Revenue Code, was a major milestone for tax, and our intellectual property practice expanded in tandem with the explosive rise in the popularity of comics, such as PEANUTS®. We had been representing publisher E.W. Scripps Co. since 1919, and it remains a client today.

Our labor practice exploded in the 1960s, but as the 1970s began, we remained fairly small: 70 attorneys in one office. By decade’s end, we had added three offices and more than 130 attorneys. Ohio’s attorney general enlisted our litigators’ help in a number of high-profile securities fraud cases, and we represented the heirs of Harvey Firestone (Firestone Tire & Rubber Co.) in a trust lawsuit culminating in a $4.5 million payout.

This was a time of rapid expansion. In 1980, we grew our Orlando, Florida, office and Columbus, Ohio, business practice and opened an office in Denver. The Washington, D.C., office increased in size and heightened our stature as a firm when it launched our Annual Legislative Seminar in 1989. This long-running program brings together clients, federal legislators and BakerHostetler attorneys for high-level conversations about timely and important issues.

We moved away from a management team leadership system in the 1980s, and we continued revising our management and firm structures in the 1990s by creating industry-specific teams and naming leaders to oversee our nationwide practice groups. These were vital steps in the evolution of our highly collaborative, team-oriented approach, which integrates coast-to-coast offices and multiple disciplines into a single, unified firm.

During the early aughts, we added more offices and key personnel. One of our top litigation partners moved to New York to launch an office there, and Paul Schmidt, now BakerHostetler’s chairman, joined our Tax Practice Group in Washington. Our work on behalf of Bernard Madoff’s fraud victims began in 2008, and the recovery already exceeds all prior Ponzi restitution efforts, with more than $14 billion recovered so far.

We continued to grow, even during the pandemic, adding offices, people and a new practice: Digital Assets and Data Management. We weathered COVID-19 by taking care of one another, giving aid wherever we could, and continuing to meet our clients’ needs as conditions, laws and policies changed. Indeed, no matter the circumstance, we always remain true to our founders’ vision of strong relationships, outstanding client service and close community bonds.