Morrison and Foerster
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| Headquarters |
425 Market Street San Francisco |
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| No. of offices | 16 |
| No. of attorneys | 1,022 (2017) |
| Major practice areas | Mergers and acquisitions, litigation and arbitration, corporate finance, corporate restructuring, securities, banking, project finance, energy and infrastructure, antitrust, tax, intellectual property, life sciences |
| Key people | Larren M. Nashelsky (Chair) |
| Revenue | $945 million (2016) |
| Profit per equity partner | $1.55 million (2016) |
| Date founded | 1883 |
| Founder | Alexander Morrison |
| Company type | Limited liability partnership |
| Website | www.mofo.com |
Morrison & Foerster LLP, is an international law firm with 16 office located throughout the United States, Asia, and Europe. The firm has over 1,000 lawyers who advise clients across a range of industries and practices, including intellectual property, patent litigation, corporate/M&A, business restructuring, and securities.
Morrison & Foerster represents a broad cross-section of clients, including leaders in technology and life sciences, Fortune 100 companies, and financial institutions. The firm also advises startup companies and investment funds, helping many over the years in their growth and development as industry leaders and familiar household brands.
The firm was the lead bankruptcy counsel to Residential Capital (ResCap), which was among the world’s largest real estate origination and servicing companies (with more than $15 billion in assets and liabilities prior to its bankruptcy filing). In December 2013, a Morrison & Foerster bankruptcy team scored a decisive victory for ResCap when Judge Martin Glenn of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York confirmed ResCap’s chapter 11 plan. Judge Glenn described the proceeding as "the most legally and factually complex case" that he had presided over in his seven years on the bench.
In July 2013, Morrison & Foerster represented SoftBank in its $21.6 billion acquisition of a 78 percent stake in Sprint Nextel. According to The Wall Street Journal, the transaction was "one of the most complex and unusual deals in the annals of takeovers." The firm also represented SoftBank, a longtime client, in Alibaba’s U.S. IPO—the largest IPO in history—and in the carve-out and restructuring of Alibaba’s financial services businesses in preparation for the IPO.
Chair: Larren Nashelsky
Chief Operating Officer: Pat Cavaney
Managing Partners: Paul Friedman, Craig Martin, Eric Piesner, Tessa J. Schwartz
Corporate Department Co-Chairs: Jacklyn Liu, Thomas Knox
Finance Department Co-Chairs: Gary Lee, Nicholas Spiliotes
Litigation Department Chair: Grant Esposito, David McDowell
Tax Department Co-Chairs: Craig Fields, Thomas Humphreys, David Strong
UC Hastings School of Law graduate Alexander Francis Morrison (1856-1921) founded the firm in 1883, in San Francisco, under the name O’Brien & Morrison. His mission was to practice "principally in the line of corporation business."
In 1891, Morrison formed a partnership with Constantine E.A. Foerster (1860-1898). Starting in the 1920s and 1930s, the firm developed a deep client roster, which brought stability to sustain the firm over the next three decades.
In the 1960s, a group of young partners—John Austin, Dick Archer, and Bob Raven—set out to reinvigorate the firm in response to stagnant revenue and changes in the business and social environment. The strategy, resulting from the so-called "Schroeder’s meetings" because they were held at the historic San Francisco restaurant, included ideas for modernizing the practice of law that were radical and innovative for their time. The partners, who identified themselves as the "Young Turks," replaced outmoded policies and insisted on budgets and operational plans. The firm started to recruit at law schools and began hiring women lawyers. In time, the firm rebuilt its litigation practice by training new associates on small bank cases.
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Wikipedia