Silicon Valley/Palo Alto Markey advice? Forum

[bruinfan10]

What is lit like in SV offices? Same stuff as SF? Just pure patent lit? Or is it such an afterthought in SV that you should really target SF if you're not into corporate work?

Lit in SV is primarily intellectual property (although at the NYC satellite offices, you'll work on a lot of cases out of the mothership, which can include regular lit. The Simpson Thacher and DPW offices, for example, will hire run of the mill litigation associates without any particular interest in IP, but the downside is they don't work as many homegrown matters as an SF general lit practice group will). The Weil office in Redwood Shores (not Palo Alto, but a pretty big campus for SV firms) had a complex commercial lit group where you didn't need to be into intellectual property, but then the headquarters for Weil's complex commercial group in Dallas was gutted by layoffs last summer, so that's a risky place to hang your hat.

In broad terms, SF is where you get more general commercial lit, SV is more about transactional/startup/VC/IP work. Whether it has less prestige than NYC for corporate work, or handles smaller deals, I'm not sure, but for example I have a friend at Latham in SV who just worked on Disney's acquisition of Lucasfilm--there are always mega-billion dollar deals in the works in SV (you're just working for Disney/Google/Facebook, not Goldman). I would be extraordinarily surprised if SV wasn't considered a transactional-side heavy-hitter, but I'm more of a lit person so I can't say for sure. And SV certainly isn't considered a lower-value legal market just because it's not a "big city" like SF--people who know what they're talking about understand that it's a pretty interrelated legal market, with the caveats described above.

I can say that for both lit and transactional in SF/SV, don't bother with Vault, it's ridiculously NYC focused--Chambers and Partners will tell you a lot more.

[bizzike]

Be cognizant of the risks in only applying to a single, small market.

[Yukos]

What is lit like in SV offices? Same stuff as SF? Just pure patent lit? Or is it such an afterthought in SV that you should really target SF if you're not into corporate work?

Lit in SV is primarily intellectual property (although at the NYC satellite offices, you'll work on a lot of cases out of the mothership, which can include regular lit. The Simpson Thacher and DPW offices, for example, will hire run of the mill litigation associates without any particular interest in IP, but the downside is they don't work as many homegrown matters as an SF general lit practice group will). The Weil office in Redwood Shores (not Palo Alto, but a pretty big campus for SV firms) had a complex commercial lit group where you didn't need to be into intellectual property, but then the headquarters for Weil's complex commercial group in Dallas was gutted by layoffs last summer, so that's a risky place to hang your hat.

Thank you for this, it's really excellent.

[bruinfan10]

What is lit like in SV offices? Same stuff as SF? Just pure patent lit? Or is it such an afterthought in SV that you should really target SF if you're not into corporate work?

Lit in SV is primarily intellectual property (although at the NYC satellite offices, you'll work on a lot of cases out of the mothership, which can include regular lit. The Simpson Thacher and DPW offices, for example, will hire run of the mill litigation associates without any particular interest in IP, but the downside is they don't work as many homegrown matters as an SF general lit practice group will). The Weil office in Redwood Shores (not Palo Alto, but a pretty big campus for SV firms) had a complex commercial lit group where you didn't need to be into intellectual property, but then the headquarters for Weil's complex commercial group in Dallas was gutted by layoffs last summer, so that's a risky place to hang your hat.

Thank you for this, it's really excellent.

No worries, I was a big SF/SV gunner for a while. Nice to pass along some of the obsessive research. There's a mod on here, I think bk1, who knows even more about that legal market than I do if you have more specific questions.

[Nammertat]

It's also worth considering where each firm's mothership is. For MoFo, I have talked to multiple people who have said SV is really limited in scope compared to their SF HQ. Conversely, Orrick's SV HQ is the place to be. I also recommend you look more specific than just Firm/office, and look at the actual people. For example, Cooley isn't the top of the pile, but if you were going to be put on Tim Teeter's [edit Teter] team it's worth considering. Same goes for Wilmer with Bill Lee, Sullivan with Nader Mousavi, or Ropes with Mark Rowland. Obviously, now is NOT the time to be super picky, but these are things you should know and consider if you end up with multiple offers (also can be helpful during the callback stage when you're asked why X firm).

[jbriggs]

As someone who summered at and is heading back to a firm in sv to do corporate work,think presenting Cooley as anything but "top of the heap" is a mistake or indicates a lack of knowledge about the market, at least for sv corporate work. As far as I can tell (not an expert but pretty informed) Cooley has to be somewhere in your top 5 if you wanna do sv corporate work, and a very strong argument that it's the best spot to head for starting a corporate legal career right now

[jbriggs]

Sorry, scratch what I said above, didn't realize until after replying that you were talking ip lit. My bad