Orrick Builds Corporate Practice in Boston with Gunderson Hire

Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe has recruited Gregg Griner of Gunderson Dettmer to head the corporate practice at the Boston office Orrick opened in January of this year.

Griner said that he was initially approached by Orrick in the fall of 2018. Over the next few months he continued speaking with the firm, doing his due diligence, until he decided it was finally time to make the move.

“Being able to build something and construct a very exciting practice in a market that is incredibly dynamic, incredibly well-established in the tech and life sciences space was an opportunity that was really too hard to pass up,” Griner said. “So being ‘the guy’ was really exciting for me.”

Griner began his legal career at the now-defunct Testa Hurwitz & Thibeault as an associate in 1992. In 1996, Griner jumped to Cooley before returning to Testa Hurwitz in 1998. He began working at Gunderson Dettmer in 2005.

Griner represents life sciences and tech companies in all stages of the corporate life cycle, from startups to public companies. He advises on financings, corporate governance, mergers and acquisitions, divestitures, joint ventures, strategic partnerships and initial and follow-on public offerings.

He also works with venture capital firms in their formation and fundraising efforts, as well as their investments in early and later stage companies and in complex leveraged transactions and restructurings. He represents investment banks in their underwriting of public equity and debt offerings as well.

Ground Up

Though he’s been practicing in the corporate space for 27 years, Griner said he’s never had the opportunity to build a practice group from its foundations.

“I was really ready for the challenge of building something,” he said.

In his new role as head of Boston’s corporate practice, Griner said that he’s looking to create a cutting-edge, top-quality practice that resembles those in the firm’s West Coast and New York offices. Those groups work with early, middle and later stage tech and life science companies.

He said that when the maturing companies he represents migrate upstream and go public the capital markets practice at Orrick will be incredibly helpful.

Though Griner is the firm’s first corporate addition in Boston, he said he certainly won’t be the last.

“It’s a long-term process to build a practice from the ground up, but I would imagine that this would have all of the capabilities of some of the larger corporate practices the firm has,” Griner said.

Griner is the eighth lateral partner addition to Orrick’s Boston office, which first opened in January with key hires from Ropes & Gray including Doug Meal and Orrick’s current Boston office leader Heather Egan Sussman, who co-headed Ropes & Gray’s privacy and data security practice.

In February, the firm made another move in the city by adding a four-partner intellectual property team to its office from Fish & Richardson.

Boston has been one of the go-to destinations for Big Law firms. In addition to Orrick, Arent Fox, Hogan Lovells, Kirkland & Ellis, Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, Morrison & Foerster, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, and Womble Bond Dickinson have all opened up offices in Boston over the last few years.