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| 2003
News and Press Releases |
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HEADLINE:
REQUIEM FOR A VENTURE - Some See VLG's Denouement As The End Of A Legal Camelot; Others Say It Was Bound To Fail
By: Joel Rosenblatt
Daily Journal Newswire. September 04, 2003
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EXCERPT: To its admirers, Menlo Park's Venture Law Group revolutionized the practice of corporate law in Silicon Valley. To its critics, VLG was a venture capital play disguised as a law firm. One thing is certain: VLG as it existed for a decade is gone. San Francisco's Heller Ehrman White & McAuliffe announced Tuesday that it would absorb the 60-attorney VLG. In a joint telephone interview Tuesday, Heller chairman Barry Levin and VLG founding partner Mark Medearis said Heller would rename its emerging-growth-company practice "the Venture Law Group of Heller Ehrman." But VLG, it seems, will remain VLG in name only. Despite earlier reports from a source close to the negotiations that Heller had lured VLG partners to the merger table by offering to let them join as a discrete operation, Levin made it clear that he expects full integration of the newcomers into his 660-attorney firm. "The concept of one firm is central to who we are," Levin said. "Our practice groups don't have separate profit-and-loss statements." Medearis said some partners are sad to say goodbye to the old VLG, but that "the last thing we want to be is an entity within an entity." VLG partners are coming from a collegial atmosphere, Medearis said, "and it's important to us to be one combined firm in that collegial culture." Medearis said it doesn't matter to VLG partners that they are joining a large firm, because VLG "is not size-oriented." "That sounds like they're trying to talk themselves into" the merger, observed one former VLG lawyer. Medearis' comments certainly contradict what VLG proclaimed for years in its literature: that the firm would grow to no more than 75 attorneys in any one location. "We believe being small means more fun, higher morale and better client service," the old literature declared. During the Silicon Valley tech boom, VLG actually grew to as many as 110 lawyers, a number that firm leaders felt was too large for comfort. Stanford Law professor Joseph Grundfest, a leading expert in securities law and a veteran observer of the valley's legal community, said VLG tried to remain small and specialized, "but that's incompatible with diversification," which partners will find at Heller. "Circumstances change," Grundfest said. VLG partners need diversification, but "you can't be small and diversified."
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