Fenwick & West to Open in New York City

California law firm Fenwick & West, known as a corporate advisor to large tech companies like Facebook as well as emerging companies like BuzzFeed and FanDuel, is launching a New York City office, the firm will announce on Tuesday.

Its lawyers will initially work out of 18,000 square feet of temporary space in Midtown Manhattan, but the plan is to find permanent real estate in Flatiron District, using real estate firm CBRE in its search, said the firm’s chair Richard Dickson.

The office will start in June with four full-time partners: Fenwick’s California-based partners Daniel Brownstone, Kristine Di Bacco and Ken Myers will relocate to New York along with one counsel and a handful of associates and staff. Meanwhile, the firm will staff a recent hire it brought on from Drinker Biddle & Reath in New York: corporate transactional partner Ian Goldstein. Altogether, Dickson said the temporary space could staff as many as 30 lawyers, and the firm is actively seeking to recruit other lawyers in New York from competitors.

Fenwick’s Silicon Valley dealmaker Mark Stevens and private equity chair Scott Joachim will split time between Silicon Valley and New York and oversee the outpost.

Dickson, 47, explained in an interview on Monday, that the firm’s practice advising emerging companies, particularly in the life sciences space, as well as technology companies in New York, influenced its decision to launch an office.

“It has driven growth in our existing practice,” said Dickson, pointing to the firm’s New York representation of BuzzFeed, FanDuel, American Express, OrbiMed, and Goldman Sachs-led messaging company, Symphony, in a range of corporate matters. “The New York market in technology is now robust enough for us that the timing is right.”

The move illustrates how the New York emerging company and technology market has made the city attractive to outside law firms looking to advise financial institutions and private equity firms involved in tech deals, startups, as well as companies in other industries — media, retail, advertising and entertainment — seeking to blend new forms of technology with their businesses.

Companies across industries particularly in retail, for instance, are collecting data on customers and prospective customers and need to understand how to keep from infringing on privacy issues, among other legal concerns, said one New York technology lawyer who requested to remain anonymous because he was not authorized to speak publicly.

Ed Zimmerman, chair of the tech group at Lowenstein Sandler, said that the movement to New York has been happening for years.

“I definitely feel like there is a glut of tech lawyers in New York at this point, whether from outside coming in or spending several days a month in New York, or incumbent lawyers,” said Zimmerman.

Fenwick’s opening is a little late, in terms of law firm history: Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, another prominent Silicon Valley law firm known for advising on the biggest IPOs, launched a New York office in 2001, and now lists 56 lawyers on its website in the city. Cooley, another tech law firm, has been in New York for more than 10 years. And details around Fenwick’s opening are hazy and fluid: it has not disclosed the street address of its temporary office space in Manhattan, nor did it provide details around any Flatiron District real estate it’s eyeing.

Dickson, who has been in his role as chair of Fenwick for about three years, was unfazed.

“I’m confident in what we’re building around,” said Dickson. “I’ve never seen an investment proposed within our partnership that has had more broad support from our partnership as a whole. I think that bodes very well for our success.”

To illustrate its existing work in the area, Fenwick provided a list of its New York representations, below.

• Representing a consortium of banks, including Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Citi and 11 other banks in connection with their investment in Symphony Communication Services

• Representing fantasy sports company FanDuel in its acquisitions of daily-fantasy startup AlphaDraft and sports analytics company numberfire, both in 2015, as well as its $275 million Series E financing in 2015

• Representing New York-based OrbiMed Advisors in life sciences investments

• Representing LearnVest in its acquisition by Northwestern Mutual in 2015

• Representing a consortium of financial institutions, including J.P. Morgan, in connection with their investment in Cloud9 Technologies

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