Neal, Gerber & Eisenberg LLP

A Chicago base and a full-service structure

The firm runs from downtown Chicago and sorts its work into four client service areas: business, intellectual property, litigation and disputes, and private wealth. It describes itself as full-service, and the four groups cover both transactional matters and courtroom work. NGE is the short form the firm uses for itself, and it has done so since it opened.

Neal, Gerber & Eisenberg LLP started in 1986. That gives the firm a working record in Chicago across several decades. In my opinion the four-part structure tells a client quite a lot before a first meeting, because it maps the firm's work onto the questions a business owner or a family tends to bring.

What the four practice groups handle

Each of the four areas breaks into named sub-practices, and the range is wide.

Business

The business group covers corporate and securities, employee benefits and executive compensation, labor and employment, real estate, restructuring and insolvency, and taxation. That mix suits companies that need one firm for financing, staff matters, property, and tax at once. Employee benefits and executive compensation work covers pension and health plans along with the pay packages that senior staff negotiate. The firm keeps restructuring and insolvency close to its corporate work, which matters when a company faces both growth and distress in the same period.

Intellectual property

The IP group handles patents, trademarks, copyrights and trade secrets, IP litigation and enforcement, cybersecurity and data privacy, and commercial and technology transactions. Patent and trademark work protects what a company builds and names. IP litigation and enforcement is the side that defends those rights once a dispute reaches court. Cybersecurity and data privacy work covers how a company holds personal data and what it must do after a breach, and technology transactions cover the licenses and contracts behind software and other tools.

Litigation and disputes

Litigation and disputes is one of the four top-level areas, which puts courtroom work on the same footing as the transactional groups. Civil litigation of this kind moves through pleadings, discovery, motions, and, where a case reaches that far, trial. A firm that carries litigation as a core area can take a matter through each of those stages.

Discovery in particular can take the longest, since each side exchanges documents and questions witnesses before any trial date. The overlap with the IP group means a dispute over a patent or trademark can draw on both sets of lawyers.

Private wealth

The private wealth group covers estate planning, probate, trust and estate administration, and trust and estate disputes. Estate planning sets out how assets pass on, through wills, trusts, and related documents. Families often use the same firm across all four, since one of these matters tends to lead to the next.

Probate and trust administration handle the steps after a death: proving a will, paying debts and taxes, and moving assets to the people named. The disputes practice covers the cases where beneficiaries or trustees disagree, which can turn on the wording of a document or the conduct of a trustee. Work of this kind can run for months, since a court oversees much of it.

How the areas connect

Several of the practice areas overlap in ways that shape how a matter moves through the firm. Taxation is one example. Tax questions appear in a corporate deal and in an estate plan alike, so the tax lawyers work with both the business and private wealth groups. That shared position is common at firms that keep tax as its own practice.

Real estate is another crossing point. Real estate work covers the purchase, sale, leasing, and financing of property, and it draws in the restructuring group when a property-heavy company runs into trouble. Labor and employment work connects to the corporate side too, since a company that buys another takes on its staff and their contracts. In my opinion these overlaps are where a full-service structure earns its keep, because a single matter usually touches more than one practice area.

The partners the site names

The firm's public pages name several partners, and the titles give a sense of how the leadership is arranged. Robert G. Gerber, known as Bobby Gerber, is the Managing Partner. His practice centers on securities and corporate finance along with international matters, which places the head of the firm inside the business group's core work.

Emer L. Simic is a partner whose practice centers on intellectual property and IP litigation. Kathryn Kaler is named as a partner as well. Brian P. Murray joined the firm as a partner in the intellectual property practice. Two of the named partners work in IP, which lines up with the size of that group's sub-practices.

The 2025 move and recent recognition

In May 2025 the firm moved into a Chicago landmark building known as The Bell. The new office earned LEED Platinum certification, the highest tier in that green-building standard. A move of that kind signals a long commitment to the city where the firm has worked since 1986.

In 2026 the firm reported that eight of its practice groups and 22 of its attorneys were recognized in the Chambers USA rankings. Chambers assesses lawyers and practices through client and peer interviews, so a count at that level comes from outside review. As a reviewer, I read the spread across eight groups as a sign that the recognition reaches several parts of the firm at once.

The firm also runs an attorney alumni network and publishes news and client alerts. An alumni network keeps former lawyers connected after they leave, which can feed referrals back to the firm. The client alerts show that the firm writes on legal developments inside its practice areas. News posts give a public trail of the subjects the firm follows.

Who the range tends to suit

The combined list of practice areas points to a mix of business and individual clients. A company can bring corporate, tax, employment, real estate, and IP questions to the same firm. A family can bring estate planning and trust matters to the private wealth group. That breadth is the main reason a client picks a full-service firm over a smaller office with a narrower focus.

The firm keeps its four service areas listed on its home page, and it holds its main office in downtown Chicago. A client with both a company and a family estate can bring each to the relevant group inside the same firm. It has used the NGE initials since 1986, and its work spans transactional and litigation matters across those four groups.