Editors' Blog

Heller 2.0 pulls off one hell of a reboot

Posted 8/03/2007 by Deal Comment

Who would have thought that the most promising UK law debut for years would have been made by San Francisco’s Heller Ehrman – for years dismissed as one of the much-hyped Californian legal community’s dullest members?

Yet here is Heller, officially opening for business this month from the 29th floor of the Gherkin with a decent team largely extracted from Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr (see story, and another one).

The first three partners – Richard Eaton, Chris Grew and Struan Penwarden – were part of the Brobeck Phleger & Harrison team that in the late 1990s made probably the most successful American assault on the UK law market of its day.

Because the strategy was different – bucking the bank ’n’ bluechip focus favoured by most US firms at the time – many didn’t notice Brobeck’s success. But the firm secured a string of venture capital and float work in its core technology market, taking a significant market share in the UK at unprecedented speed for a foreign firm.

Still, after years of dithering over a UK launch, Heller would not have been top of many lawyers’ lists to launch in London in style.

Much of that shift has been down to Heller’s re-invention as a serious technology player, a transformation that was given booster rockets after it secured the 2003 takeover of the iconic Palo Alto boutique Venture Law Group.

Like, its San Fran rival Orrick, Heller has been well placed – and probably more successful – at preying on its more tech-focused Silicon Valley neighbours when the dot.com collapse wreaked havoc in California.

Ironically, Heller’s reinvention comes as one of America’s most-celebrated legal technology brands appears to be losing its way.

It is clear that the legacy Hale and Dorr partners feel increasingly isolated in the full-service generalisation that has been the result of the Boston giant’s 2004 merger with Washington DC’s Wilmer Cutler & Pickering.

In addition to the Heller departures, it has also lost tax partner Simon Court to Blake Lapthorn Tarlo Lyons and intellectual property/IT head Mark Haftke, who quit to launch his own boutique.

Even worse, the firm has closed its Oxford arm, which is about as symbolic a V-sign to the VC/spin-out community as you can get.

One ex-partner sums up the mood: “The firm I joined was not the firm that I left. The [Wilmer Cutler] merger changed its character and broadened its focus. We didn’t get the same energy or support.”

The only mystery is why more US firms, still hung up on the banking clients that hardly ever move with partners these days, aren’t following Heller’s lead. One of the great attractions of the tech scene, aside from the possibility that you could be backing a Google-of-tomorrow, is that clients often still move with their lawyers.

As such, Heller is taking a team whose clients include Wolfson Microelectronics, Autonomy Corporation and private equity fund Atlantic Bridge – with a number following from Wilmer Cutler.

In understandably bullish mood, Heller chairman Matt Larrabee tells Legal Week: “We have the leading tech practice in places like Silicon Valley and San Francisco and now we have the leading corporate technology practice in London.”

A touch hyperbolic perhaps, but with Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati no longer quite the force it was, there is some substance to Heller’s sales pitch.

alex.novarese@legalweek.com; georgina.stanley@legalweek.com

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