Cooley LLP

Cooley’s lawyers solve legal issues for entrepreneurs, investors, financial institutions and established public and private companies with an emphasis on tech, life sciences and other high-growth industries. Clients partner with Cooley on transformative deals, complex IP and regulatory matters, and high-stakes litigation, where innovation meets the law. Cooley maintains an environment of inclusion and is proud to be recognized by Law360 as a “Best Law Firm for Minority Partners.” The firm has 1,200+ lawyers across 17 offices in the US, Asia and Europe.

Main areas of practice
Corporate: Key corporate strengths include capital markets, M&A, emerging and public companies, venture capital, tech transactions and life sciences corporate partnering and licensing. Cooley is continuously ranked as the most active law firm representing issuers and underwriters in IPOs in the life sciences and tech sectors. Cooley’s leadership in this area gives us deep industry-specific experience as corporate counsel to high-growth companies.

Litigation: Key litigation strengths include advertising, antitrust, appellate, arbitration, business restructuring, class actions, employment, insurance, IP litigation, ITC, life sciences and healthcare, patent, privacy and cybersecurity, product liability, regulatory, securities, tax, trademark and white-collar. Cooley’s global trial practice has won verdicts and awards worth billions of dollars and protected clients against competitors, consumers and regulators. The team includes five partners who are ACTL Fellows and 20+ former Assistant US Attorneys and Department of Justice lawyers. Cooley offers experience in 100+ state, federal and international courts, arbitral forums and administrative bodies.

Intellectual property: Cooley has one of the largest full-service IP practices of any law firm in the US that serves as IP counsel to 1,000+ companies across all industry sectors worldwide. Key strengths include IP litigation across all major venues; patent counseling and prosecution; trademark, copyright and advertising; and due diligence, licensing and strategic transactions. Notably, Cooley has one of the largest life sciences and medical device patent teams in the US. In 2020, the firm filed 5,000+ patent applications and 3,000 trademark applications globally for its clients. Cooley has also collectively led 1,000+ investor-side and company-side due diligence reviews in high-value deals and transactions.

Regulatory: Key strengths include antitrust and competition, communications, financial services, government contracts, insurance, healthcare, education, international trade, media and securities. Cooley has significant experience representing clients in investigations and matters involving the SEC, DOJ, FTC, FCC, ITC, DOD, DOE, EPA, NSC, EEOC, Treasury and other federal agencies.

Antitrust and competition: Providing a full range of counseling, litigation, agency representation and arbitration services, Cooley handles all aspects of antitrust/competition law and trade regulation matters for Fortune 500 corporations, as well as growing companies, in virtually every sector.

Capital markets: Cooley is the leading law firm for all US company-side IPOs since 2014 and VC-backed technology and healthcare and life sciences IPOs for the last 15+ years, according to Deal Point Data and IPO Vital Signs
respectively.

Cyber/data/privacy: Cooley’s cyber/data/privacy practice is a global team of lawyers focusing on all aspects of cyber, data protection and privacy. The firm represents clients across all industries, ranging from emerging to Fortune 500 companies, across the full spectrum of privacy and cyber-related issues. Cooley has successfully litigated a wide range of cases involving privacy and data breach issues, including class actions and government enforcement actions.

Emerging companies: Cooley represents 6,000+ private companies across all industries. Over the past decade, Cooley has represented thousands of technology, life sciences and other high-growth businesses with all aspects of their formation and development. The firm is involved in 1,300+ financings annually and is ranked as the #1 law firm representing VC-backed companies going public for the last decade.

Intellectual property litigation: Cooley’s IP litigators win cases across the US and UK in every conceivable forum and manner. They are experienced in all types of IP cases including patent, Section 337 investigations, trademark, trade dress, trade secret, copyright, false advertising, domain name and licensing matters. With nearly 600 IP cases in the last five years, including 500+ patent cases and 950+ trademark and copyright disputes worldwide, Cooley is widely acknowledged as one of the top IP litigation practices in the US.

Life sciences: With almost 1,800+ public and private life science company clients worldwide, Cooley is the leading deal firm across all aspects of corporate and transactional practices, including M&A, IPOs, financings and private equity work. Cooley represents almost 50% of the NASDAQ Biotechnology Index and is widely known as a best-in-class firm for handling corporate partnering and licensing transactions.

M&A: Since 2017, Cooley has handled 1,000+ M&A transactions, with an aggregate value of $375+ bn, making our practice one of the most active in the country, particularly for technology and life sciences companies.

Public companies: Cooley counsels public companies in high-stakes, complex business and litigation matters. Cooley represents 1,500+ public companies, and for 200+, serves as principal corporate governance and securities counsel. The team has extensive experience and familiarity with federal and state securities laws enabling us to be strategic advisors to seasoned and newly public companies.

Securities litigation: Cooley has one of the most active practices for the defense of issuers in shareholder litigation in the US. The firm’s securities litigation clients include a diverse range of businesses and individuals, including startups and Fortune 500 companies.

Fund formation: Cooley has been building funds globally for 60+ years and is counsel to 500+ investment fund organizations. The firm completed 370+ fund closings in 2020, raising over $34 bn in capital commitments. The team advises on every type of fund formation: venture capital, fund of funds, private equity, evergreen, growth equity and other managers at all stages and sizes, from individual angel funds to billion-dollar institutional funds.

Private equity: Cooley’s team has guided leading private equity sponsors in some of the market’s largest and most complex transactions.

Tax: The firm has a market reputation for innovative, tax-efficient structuring of business transactions and effective resolution of significant tax controversies.

Real estate: The team’s diverse capabilities allow us to explore all facets of real estate development and craft the best business-oriented solutions for its clients. Cooley assist owners, operators, developers, lenders, tenants, and institutional investors and advisors with a wide variety of real property and related capital markets transactions as well as litigation.

Technology transactions: The firm’s technology transactions team combines intellectual property and commercial transactions expertise, which enables them to meet the demands of a fast-evolving, increasingly global environment. Many of the firm’s lawyers have “in house” legal or business experience with technology companies; all dealmakers who have an aptitude for, and keen interest in, the technologies that help their clients thrive.

Compensation and benefits: Cooley’s compensation and benefits group addresses its clients’ needs to compensate, reward and protect their employees and other service providers. The firm brings together the ERISA, tax, corporate, labor and securities law skills necessary to deal effectively with the structuring and administration of its clients’ most complex compensation and benefit programs.