Correspondence, memoranda, speeches, writings, notes, reports, briefs, opinions, testimonies, family papers, business records, newspaper clippings, printed material, and other papers chiefly documenting Corcoran's private legal practice and his government service during the first two presidential terms of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Includes material pertaining to his service in the New Deal era as legislative draftsman, litigator, employment bureau director, and speech writer.

Subjects include politics, political reform, campaigns, domestic issues, foreign affairs, China, reorganization of the Supreme Court in 1937, Securities and Exchange Commission, taxation, the 14th Air Force Association and the Flying Tigers, and minerals and mining. Individuals, institutions, and organizations represented include Anna Chennault, Claire Lee Chennault, Benjamin V. Cohen, John Bowden Connally, Walter F. George, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Lyndon B. Johnson, George W. Norris, John J. O'Connor, Jr., the American Law Institute, Brown University, District of Columbia Bar, and Harvard University.

Documents his work with Cotton, Franklin, Wright & Gordon, New York, N.Y., (1927-1932) and with Corcoran, Youngman & Rowe (1941-1981). Includes material on clients such as China Defense Supplies, American International Underwriters, Mme. Paul DuPuy, Ernest K. Halbach, Sterling Drug, Tennessee Gas Transmission Company, and United Fruit Company.

Correspondents include Bernard M. Baruch, Francis Biddle, Hugo Lafayette Black, Edward B. Burling, Anna Chennault, Benjamin V. Cohen, John Bowden Connally, William Denman, William O. Douglas, Edward C. Eicher, James Aloysisus Farley, Jerome Frank, Felix Frankfurter, Harry Lloyd Hopkins, Hubert H. Humphrey, Harold L. Ickes, Joseph P. Kennedy, Robert Houghwout Jackson, Lyndon B. Johnson, James McCauley Landis, Frank Murphy, Claude Pepper, Sam Rayburn, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Samuel Irving Rosenman, James H. Rowe, Walter Bedell Smith, and Stuart Symington.