About Stephen

Steve Patton is of counsel to the Litigation group in the Chicago office of Kirkland & Ellis LLP. Steve has extensive experience trying cases and arguing appeals in federal and state courts throughout the country in a wide variety of commercial disputes. He has also served as an advisor to senior management in a number of ”bet the company“ exposures and negotiated several multibillion settlements in complex disputes. Steve is a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers and previously served on the College’s Selection Committee for Northern Illinois. During his first, 33-year stint with the Firm (from 1978 to 2011), he was a senior litigation partner and served in a number of leadership positions, including chair of the Firm’s Litigation Management Committee. From 2011 to 2017, Steve served as the City of Chicago’s Corporation Counsel and Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s senior legal advisor. Since his return to the Firm in 2017, Steve has served as lead counsel in several litigation matters, including two nationwide, pro bono impact cases. In the first, Ramirez v. ICE, Kirkland represents a nationwide class of immigrant teenagers illegally detained by ICE. On July 2, 2020, after a four week bench trial, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled in favor of the Plaintiff class on all liability issues. After further proceedings with respect to remedial relief, on September 21, 2021, the Court granted Plaintiffs’ request for a permanent injunction and final judgment. In the second case, Karnoski v. Trump, Kirkland represented transgender persons challenging President Trump’s ban on transgender persons openly serving in the military. The case was voluntarily dismissed in 2020, after Defendants repealed the Trump ban and reinstituted their prior policy of allowing transgender persons to serve openly. In addition to his pro bono work, Steve has worked with various not-for-profits to reduce crime and violence in Chicago, including violence interruption and prevention programs that work with gang members and other at-risk youth and leading efforts to enact legislation to ban ”ghost“ guns, require criminal background checks, and keep guns out of the hands of criminals.

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