Technology Sector Leadership:
Presenting a Different Face of Carr McClellan

This special edition of Perspectives focuses on our firm’s expanding experience, knowledge and capabilities in representing technology companies and their investors. This knowledge base cuts across all practice areas of the firm, well beyond our corporate and intellectual property (IP) groups.

Litigation. Trade secrets. Licensing. Real estate. Taxation. Estate planning and wealth transfer. Over the years our lawyers have built broad experience in the technology industry across all these disciplines. Our firm has a long history of representing companies and their owners in their various business endeavors, spanning many industries and business models. That broad experience, which includes representation of many clients in the technology sector, forms the foundation of our growing technology practice.

Our corporate group has seen the most significant growth in the representation of technology industry clients. That growth includes representing entrepreneurs and their startups in all aspects of formation and early growth, as well as angel and other investors in all stages of equity financings. Ed Willig’s article on the evolving funding marketplace for startups provides important context for newly formed technology companies, the entrepreneurs that lead them and the investors that fund them. Helen Christakos explains the new privacy guidelines for the mobile industry issued by Kamela Harris, the California Attorney General. Valerie Menager points out why the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is not irrelevant to a technology industry workforce that is growing again. And although he’s a litigator, Scott Atkinson shows his versatility by parsing the salient provisions of important recent amendments to the Video Privacy Act.

Our litigators have deep expertise in a wide array of “soft IP” cases, including disputes involving trade secrets and licensing. Our real estate attorneys have represented both tech companies that lease space and landlords that lease facilities to tech companies, leading to valuable insights into a whole range of specialized, and often unique, business and legal issues. Sales tax issues regarding cloud-based software (often delivered as a service), and the shifting sales tax framework under various states’ laws are the subjects of increasing focus by our tax department. And not to be left out, our estate planning and wealth transfer group has built a considerable body of experience in deploying complex planning techniques for the tax efficient transfer of wealth created in the technology industry.

Read on. The articles that follow represent a cross section of our lawyers, providing just a glimpse into the myriad of subject matters in which our firm has developed expertise and experience that provide value for our technology industry clients.