London headcount: 80 lawyers, 27 partners
London head: Justin Stock (pictured)
Office speciality: Technology, life sciences, litigation
Representative work: Advised SoftBank on virtual reality company Improbable’s $502m fundraising; advised Apollo Global Management and The Vistria Group on $1.1bn acquisition of Apollo Education Group; advised Tata Steel and Bambino on a series of litigation matters.
For a major US shop that built its reputation with Silicon Valley’s globe-trotting tech giants, Cooley’s UK entrance was belated. After much persuasion of its sceptical US partnership by energetic chief executive Joe Conroy, a substantive launch finally arrived in 2015, with a 55-lawyer team assembled from Morrison & Foerster (MoFo) and Edwards Wildman Palmer.
Since its launch, Cooley has achieved sustained income growth in the City. While the Palo Alto-bred law firm joined the $1bn club after growing its top line 10% to $1.07bn for its 2017 year, its London arm grew by an eye-catching 22% to $57.5m. Global profits per equity partner jumped 6% to $2.08m last year. Cooley’s reputation as one of the fastest growing US firms of the 2010s now seems assured.
‘We definitely can’t complain,’ says London managing partner Justin Stock. While US-generated clients accounted for 25% of London revenue last year, the UK outpost has some significant client relationships, including Tata Steel. Comments Stock: ‘We work with a high number of international clients. The revenue is not necessarily huge, but it is keeping them with Cooley and those relationships can lead to much bigger things.’ He points to the contribution by London lawyers in the US-led $24bn initial public offering of Snapchat parent Snap last year, one of the largest tech floats of the decade.
Brisk revenue growth in London comes despite a quiet period for senior recruitment, with only one partner added in 2017, product liability litigator Rod Freeman from Hogan Lovells in May.
‘We work with a high number of international clients. Keeping them with Cooley can lead to much bigger things.’
Justin Stock, Cooley
‘Rod’s arrival is transformational for the office,’ says London-based litigation vice-chair Laurence Harris. ‘It is not just that he’s an amazing practitioner and brought a large amount of work with him, but also he’s absolutely concentrated in the tech space. Many companies on the West Coast are his clients and he has brought those relationships.’
Overall, the London practice maintains a balance between transactional and disputes: 13 of its partners work on litigation and 12 in corporate (Cooley has considerably bulked up its contentious practice in the US in the last 15 years).
It is conceded that Cooley remains some way from getting its City arm where it aims, with the ultimate objective of securing marquee Europe work from iconic US clients such as Google and Facebook.
Notes Stock: ‘We want to build a practice in London that competes for high-growth companies, life science companies, tech companies and any sophisticated clients of that sort in both transactional and contentious work.’
Meanwhile, the firm is still hoping to widen its European coverage with a launch in continental Europe before Brexit’s March 2019 deadline – Frankfurt and Brussels being the two most frequently tipped locations.
Such ambitions will demand a change of pace. The office, which still only accounts for just over 5% of global turnover, increased its lawyer headcount by only one to 80 last year. With two partners leaving in April 2017, partner headcount was down at the beginning of 2018 until the February recruitment of M&A partner Michal Berkner from Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom.
Stock concedes that recruitment is slower than hoped: ‘I would love to surpass 150 within the next two years but those things take time and we want to make sure we hire the right people.’
Some also argue that integration between the former MoFo corporate hands and ex-Edwards Wildman litigators remains a work-in-progress, reflecting the gulf in culture between the two legacy practices and client bases. Yet these all sound like mere growing pains for a firm that even competitors frame as a quality operator with a crystal-sharp market position. As tech transactions partner Chris Coulter concludes: ‘Having clear messages about what the firm stands for and does is one of the benefits of being at Cooley.’
marco.cillario@legalease.co.uk
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