Morrison & Foerster is a prominent global law firm with a leading startup, emerging company, venture capital, and institutional funding practice.
We have more than 150 partners and other lawyers of the firm currently committing a significant amount of their professional time to this practice area, and we are currently working with approximately 600 leading startup businesses and their funders. Our attorneys operate from an established position of strength across the United States, Europe and Asia, particularly in San Francisco, Palo Alto, Southern California, Northern Virginia, Washington, D.C., Berlin, London, Hong Kong and Shanghai. Our strong global presence facilitates venture capital investment in our clients in the U.S. and worldwide and positions us to advise startup companies based in those key markets. Our deep experience allows us to offer practical domestic and cross-border corporate, financing, and commercial advice and, our clients tell us, our input distinguishes MoFo from other law firms.
We are thought leaders in the emerging companies space, teaching at prestigious institutions around the world and collaborating with key incubators and accelerators to provide educational programs, training, and guidance to up-and-coming entrepreneurs. Our collaborative approach to client service allows us to leverage all of our firm’s resources, notably including our leading practices in patent prosecution, IP, tech transactions, privacy, tax, cyber, employment/labor, and dispute resolution.
In the last decade, we have assisted our clients in raising more than $6 billion of venture capital, and in closing over 80 initial public offerings, as well as hundreds of mergers and acquisitions with an aggregate transactional value in excess of $400 billion.
Why MoFo Now?
For entrepreneurs who are founding and growing durable businesses, we think counsel should be experienced, sincerely interested in providing assistance for the long haul, and delivering services at a fair cost — and that is what we do at MoFo. We use our network to connect companies and funding sources, always one of the most important needs for emerging companies. We have invested internally to acquire deep domain knowledge on cutting-edge technologies and issues, and our technology-enabled solutions allow the delivery of services at a price consistent with web-only applications, particularly for initial corporate formation and financing work.
For venture capital investors, corporate venture capital, angel investors, high net worth individuals, and other funding sources, we have formed hundreds of private investment partnerships around the world, and we have participated in hundreds of financings (from early stage seed rounds to the final pre-IPO round) in recent years.
Our attorneys — many of whom are equipped with advanced degrees in relevant disciplines such as electrical engineering and computer science — have a deep understanding of the complex technologies at the heart of our clients’ businesses. Our deep industry knowledge allows our attorneys to represent many emerging growth companies and investors in cutting-edge areas of technology, including software, mobile, virtual reality, e-commerce, cybersecurity, data analytics, robotics, drones, and other technology-driven markets. The firm also remains at the forefront of working with emerging companies and investors focused on life sciences, media, clean technology, alternative energy and impact investing, adtech and fintech.
We understand the lifecycle of emerging businesses at every stage of development. We work the same schedule as startup businesses: 24/7. From initial meeting with a founder or funder about a concept or possible new venture, we plan for the ultimate exit. We have destination M&A and capital markets practices that are critical to mapping business decisions made early in the process. When disputes arise, our litigation group is engaged.
Our best references are our clients. We adapt based on our experiences, and we seek to exceed expectations every day.
We remain honored to work closely with extraordinary people founding, funding, and growing many of the most important new businesses in the world. We believe we have an exceptional network, which continues to grow on a daily basis, so that we can make the best possible connections for our clients and truly add value to the growth opportunities in which they are engaged.
Here is what they say about us:
“They’ve been great – they have been very thorough as well as thoughtful about the business side.” (Chambers USA 2015)
“On top of the very technical legal service they have good business logic.” (Chambers USA 2015)
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