Cooley Poaches California IP Litigator, Eyeing Tech Court Fights

Cooley LLP has hired intellectual property litigator Christa Anderson as the Silicon Valley law firm eyes a growing wave of court battles over corporate technology and trade secrets.

Anderson joins from heavyweight trial law firm Keker, Van Nest & Peters. She has represented Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Meta Platforms Inc.'s Facebook and Qualcomm, among other clients.

She expands Cooley’s “bench of first-chair trial lawyers,” according to Mike Attanasio, the firm’s litigation department chief.

“Our culture of courtroom advocacy is really enhanced by having someone with the deep experience Krista has in the courtroom,” Attanasio said in an interview. She “brings to Cooley a stable of relationships in Silicon Valley and beyond that look a lot like ours and, in some instances, are the same as ours, maybe with different points of contact,” he said.

The firm, best known for advising startup and other young tech companies, reported just under $2 billion in gross revenue and nearly $4.1 million in profits per equity partner last year, according to data compiled by the American Lawyer. It has advised the likes of Google, Facebook and Apple Inc., as well as San Francisco fintech company Plaid Inc., Zoom Video Communications Inc. and Snapchat Inc.

Attanasio and Anderson said they expect work to surge as courts slog through pandemic-induced backlogs and intellectual property lawsuits become cheaper to prosecute, thanks to a shift to remote proceedings.

That means many cases will take longer to resolve, according to Anderson.

“I just see this big crush of cases,” she said, “including in places where plaintiffs used to be able to get to trial fairly quickly.”

This story was produced by Bloomberg Law Automation.