Fenwick & West


Fenwick & West LLP is a law firm of more than 350 attorneys with offices in Silicon Valley, San Francisco, Seattle, New York City, Santa Monica and Shanghai. The firm's practice focuses on technology and life sciences companies and start-ups. Fenwick's lawyers are divided among four primary practice groups, with numerous subgroups within each: Corporate, Litigation, Tax and Intellectual Property. It is ranked as one of the 100 largest law firms in the United States, and is one of the most prestigious and selective law firms according to American Lawyer magazine. Fenwick has worked on a variety of high-profile matters for clients such as Amazon, Facebook, Google, Uber, Airbnb, American Express, Dropbox, Apple, Etsy, Reddit, Coinbase, and Cisco. The firm also frequently represents prominent venture capital firms and other technology investors.

Background

In 2008, IP Business & Law listed Fenwick as one of only 20 "go to law firms on the cutting edge of patent litigation," and in 2011, Global Law Experts named Fenwick & West the #1 antitrust law firm.
Larry Kramer, dean of Stanford Law School, told Bloomberg Businessweek that Fenwick "is one of the great indigenous firms of Silicon Valley," noting that " understands how the Valley works better than most, everything from how to raise money, where to incorporate, and how to nurture and grow a startup."
Prior to taking Facebook public in 2012, American Lawyer said, "Fenwick’s work was critical in allowing the social media company to stay private for so long." The firm's patent prosecution team brought Facebook in as an intellectual property client a few months before their corporate colleagues in 2007.
"Where many big firms have eschewed patent prosecution as commodity work that goes to the lowest bidder, Fenwick has embraced it as central to the mission of its technology and life sciences clients and start-ups whose small IP portfolios can be the crown jewels of their business."

Milestones

2014