Wilson Sonsini Goodrich and Rosati

Locations

The firm's headquarters are on Page Mill Road in Palo Alto, California, as a part of the Stanford Research Park.

In total, the firm has offices in ten major cities in the U.S., including Austin, Texas; Boston, Massachusetts; Los Angeles, California; New York City; Palo Alto, California; San Diego, California; San Francisco, California; Seattle, Washington; Washington, D.C.; and Wilmington, Delaware. Outside of the United States, it has offices in Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai, China; and Brussels, Belgium.

History

WSGR was founded in 1961 as McCloskey, Wilson, Mosher & Martin in Palo Alto, California, with attorney John Arnot Wilson being one of the named partners, who was a graduate of Princeton University and Yale Law School's class of 1941, which included Supreme Court jurists Byron White and Potter Stewart as well as former President Gerald Ford. Since its launch, the firm concentrated on the representation of emerging technology companies and venture capitalists. For example, in 1969, the firm helped form Mayfield Fund, one of the first major venture capital firms. In 1970, John B. Goodrich joins the firm. Larry Sonsini and Mario Rosati joined in 1966 and 1971, respectively. In 1978, the firm takes on the name it has had since: Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, PC.

In 1980, WSGR represented Apple Inc. in its much-publicized IPO. The firm was also involved in representing companies in the semiconductor industry, like LSI Logic, Altera, Cirrus Logic, Lattice Semiconductor, and Cypress Semiconductor. These companies were among those that helped Silicon Valley earn its name.

For many years, the firm had only one office, in Palo Alto. In late 1998, the firm opened its first national office, in Kirkland, Washington, led by partner Patrick Schultheis. Within the next few years, the firm opened offices in Austin, Texas, San Francisco, Northern Virginia, New York, Salt Lake City, and San Diego.

Like other law firms representing start-up technology companies, WSGR accepted equity in its clients as a form of payment in return for deferral of fees, and also passed on stakes in its investment fund to associates and staff members as a means of retaining employees.

In 1994, WSGR represented Netscape Communications in its IPO, in addition to representing several other companies that, like Netscape, were tied to the start of the Internet Age, including Infoseek, USWeb/CKS, and Inktomi. WSGR also began to lead the nation in the number of issuer IPO transactions, completing 37 IPOs in 1995 and 44 IPOs in 1997.

In 1999, when VA Linux went public, the firm reaped $24.5 million as the value of the 100,000 shares that the firm held ballooned in value. Other IPOs that enriched the firm because of its equity stake were those of Ask Jeeves, Google, and online grocer Webvan. With the downturn in the dotcom economy, however, WSGR had to make a number of adjustments; 100 support staff and 60 associates were laid off—about 10% of its attorneys. Good times returned in 2004 when the firm advised Google on its $2.7 billion IPO.

In 2005, WSGR launched an office in China and boosted its New York office. In 2006 the firm relocated its Northern Virginia lawyers to Washington, D.C., to be closer to government regulators.

In 2016, WSGR represented long-time client LinkedIn in their $26.2 billion acquisition by Microsoft, which represented Microsoft's largest ever acquisition.

Notable people

In addition to numerous professors and partners, both at Wilson Sonsini and other firms, some of the more notable current and former Wilson Sonsini attorneys include: