Cooley LLP

Cooley LLP

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Headquarters	Palo Alto, CA
No. of offices	12
No. of attorneys	800
Major practice areas	General practice
Revenue	$802 million
Date founded	1920 (San Francisco)
Company type	Limited liability partnership
Website
www.cooley.com

Cooley LLP is a law firm headquartered in Palo Alto, California, with offices in the United States, the United Kingdom and China. The firm's practice areas include technology, life sciences, clean technology, real estate, financial services, retail, and energy.

History

Cooley was founded by Arthur Cooley and Louis Crowley in 1920 in San Francisco. In 1958, Cooley formed Draper, Gaither and Anderson, the first venture capital partnership to be organized on the West Coast. Also in the 1950s, Cooley formed Raychem and National Semiconductor, one of the original chip companies that gave "Silicon Valley" its name. In 1971 the firm (then Cooley, Crowley, Gaither, Godward, Castro & Huddleson) began representing Disney in the controversial copyright and trademark infringement case Walt Disney Productions v. Air Pirates. In the late 1980s, the firm moved into the tech area Palo Alto, from its then base in San Francisco. In 1989, the firm (then Cooley, Godward, Castro, Huddleson & Tatum) facilitated the IPO of Qualcomm. On October 31, 2006, Cooley LLP (then Cooley Godward) merged with Kronish Lieb Weiner & Hellman, which resulted in the firm growing from 440 lawyers to 550. In the announcement of the merger, the New York Times referred to Cooley as a "Leading Silicon Valley law firm". In January 2009 however, the firm laid off 114 people from its offices, citing "the uncertain economy".

Offices

Cooley's San Francisco office is located on 101 California Street.

Cooley has offices in 11 United States cities and Shanghai. It also had an office in Kirkland, Washington, which it closed in the early 2000s. In 2004 the firm also had plans to expand to London and Continental Europe after moving into the NYC and Washington DC markets.

Cooley launched in London on January 12, 2015, creating a 55-lawyer practice and the firm's first office in Europe. Its lawyers were laterally hired from the London offices of Morrison & Foerster and Edwards Wildman Palmer, raiding the latter's entire office.

Recognition

The American Lawyer has ranked Cooley number forty-seven in its annual ranking of U.S. law firms by gross revenue. Top Legal 500 and the National Law Journal's NLJ 250 has ranked Cooley's practice areas from second through eighth tier in its national survey of law firms. In addition, U.S. News and World Report nominated Cooley as the 2011–12 law firm of the year in biotechnology law. In 2011, Cooley LLP was named U.S. Tax Court Firm of the Year by the International Tax Review.

Controversies

In 2003, according to Steve Hoare, Cooley faced "the prospect of sharing liability for the death of a teenager struck by a car driven by one of its associates". He wrote further that the associate's "firm may be held jointly responsible because questions have arisen over whether Wagner, who was an associate at the firm at the time, was working as a lawyer at the moment of the crash". Prior to the suit, the associate had pleaded guilty and served one year in prison.