Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison
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| Headquarters | San Francisco, California |
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| No. of attorneys | 520 (Jan. 2003) |
| No. of employees | 1,100 (2003) |
| Major practice areas | General practice |
| Date founded | 1926 |
| Company type | Limited liability partnership |
| Dissolved | 2003 (bankruptcy) |
Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison LLP was a large law firm based in San Francisco, California. In 2003, the firm was liquidated under Chapter 7 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code, after it had lost a substantial amount of money in the dot-com bubble and merger talks with Morgan, Lewis & Bockius had fallen through.
Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison was formed in 1926 when three lawyers split from Morrison & Foerster (then called Morrison, Dunne & Brobeck). Between the two World Wars, the firm cultivated an A-list of bluechip San Francisco clients, including Wells Fargo, and managing partner Herman Phleger served as an advisor to Bernard Baruch during the creation of the United Nations. In 1980, the firm established an office in Palo Alto to serve expanding technology companies in Santa Clara County. By the mid-1990s, Brobeck had become one of the two largest firms representing technology startups in Silicon Valley, with marquee clients such as Cisco Systems, Sun Microsystems, Nokia and Nike.
In the 1990s, as the technology boom began to roar, Brobeck attorneys began accepting from emerging companies in lieu of traditional law firm compensation. The firm re-oriented itself to service many emerging tech companies who were going public via initial public offerings (IPOs) and then engaging in extensive merger and market consolidation (mergers & acquisitions).
Brobeck's revenue jumped from $214 million in 1998 to $314 million in 2000. By the summer of 2000, the firm counted eight offices nationwide and 754 attorneys, up 40 percent from the year before. Brobeck's profits-per-partner soared to more than $1 million a year. Just three years later, it had reached 1,100 lawyers and support staff in 14 cities, and offered a starting first-year associate salary of $135,000 per year.
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