San Francisco

Kirkland opened its San Francisco office in 2003. The office enhances our service to existing and prospective clients in the Bay Area and around the country and abroad. The office was established with a core group of Kirkland attorneys who chose to relocate to San Francisco and has grown to approximately 90 attorneys, drawing upon the experience of lateral hires and law school hires. The office focuses on litigation, intellectual property and corporate matters. Our Bay Area clients include financial institutions, private equity funds, and public and private companies in various industries, including information technology and life sciences.

Corporate

The San Francisco corporate practice focuses on mergers and acquisitions, leveraged buyout and other private equity transactions, tax, and corporate reorganizations and restructurings. The practice represents private equity funds in all aspects of their businesses, including formation, acquisitions and divestitures. Our attorneys serve as lead counsel in structuring and negotiating various strategic and leveraged acquisitions and divestitures, joint ventures, mergers and acquisitions, senior bank financings, subordinated debt financings, equity financings, executive compensation matters, venture capital investments and restructurings and workouts. Our attorneys have negotiated and completed transactions in a variety of industries including manufacturing, consumer products, software, post-secondary education, restaurants, retail, staffing, financial services, technology outsourcing and logistics.

Litigation

The San Francisco litigation group focuses on high-profile, complex litigation and its business and public relations implications for some of the nation's most prominent public and private corporations. The office is involved in bench and jury trials, arbitrations, and the appeals process. Our attorneys have served as counsel on a variety of class action matters, including consumer class actions, labor disputes and securities class actions. In addition, our attorneys have served as key counsel in wine distribution and shipment litigation around the nation. The office has substantial experience in international litigation and arbitrations, having handled complex matters involving foreign sovereigns and other foreign entities. The office has extensive experience handling appeals and has argued before federal appellate courts.

Intellectual Property

The San Francisco intellectual property practice focuses on litigation and transactions. The litigation practice involves patent, trade secret, trademark, trade dress, antitrust, licensing, contract and business tort litigation. Our experience includes patent infringement trial practice before the United States International Trade Commission and in federal and state jurisdictions throughout the country. The practice spans across various industries, including computer science, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, biotechnology and other technical areas.

The intellectual property transactional practice focuses on domestic and international transactions where intellectual property rights are important, such as joint ventures, product development agreements and licenses, outsourcing, finance, securitization and corporate matters where technology or marketing rights are involved. The practice's clients include industries such as finance and banking, information technology, pharmaceutical and biotechnology, software and other high-tech companies.

Efficient Delivery of Services

As an integrated part of a firm with approximately 1,500 lawyers, Kirkland's San Francisco office can commit the full resources of an international firm to any matter, as appropriate. Our offices are networked, and in many instances our network is also linked to that of our clients. The San Francisco office reflects the strengths present throughout the Firm to handle legally and technically complex transactions and disputes with dispatch and efficiency. The growth of the San Francisco office has been based upon delivering legal services of the highest quality in a cost-effective manner through lean staffing, appropriate delegation to talented junior lawyers and close client relationships.