We frequently represent venture capitalists, venture capital firms, and their portfolio companies, drawing upon the firm’s litigation strengths and deep understanding of the venture capital industry. As the largest law firm in the world dedicated only to litigation, we are free from the many conflicts created by transactional work. This gives us unparalleled flexibility to act on behalf of our clients. We are comfortable litigating in any forum, and we leverage our familiarity with fund structures, the formation and governance process, the advisory relationships, and the regulatory schemes affecting venture firms. We combine this knowledge with our litigation prowess to deliver superlative results in the venture capital litigation space.
We have litigated virtually every type of dispute arising in this industry, from partnership disputes between and among GPs and between GPs and LPs to disputes between venture capital firms and portfolio-company founders. We also have significant experience representing venture capital firms against other such firms in disputes arising from partner or portfolio manager raids, as well as from co-investments and other joint ventures.
Our venture capital practice also brings to bear the firm’s best-in-class intellectual property litigation capabilities. Our technical expertise and fluency in AI, life sciences, software, fintech, [others?] make our firm a natural one-stop shop for venture capital clients. In addition to regularly litigating all manner of intellectual property cases, we often provide pre-litigation advice for venture capital clients with potential intellectual property issues—for instance, assessing the strength of a target company’s intellectual property portfolio.
We are also often called to assist our venture firm clients in corporate governance disputes SEC and other government investigations and regulatory enforcement actions, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) investigations, antitrust and competition litigation, consumer and other class action litigation, data privacy litigation, international arbitrations, or any other contractual or commercial dispute.
Many of our achievements in this space are confidential--you will never read them in the press. That is by design. We recognize that sometimes our clients’ best interests are served by settling cases before they become public. The lack of publicity concerning the resolution—or even the existence—of these disputes reflects our skill in resolving disputes discretely and swiftly.
Representative Clients:
- 8VC
- August Capital
- Benchmark Capital
- Foresite Capital
- Idealab
- Lightspeed Venture Partners
- Sequoia Capital
- Spark Capital
- TPG Capital