July 6, 2004

THE LOS ANGELES DAILY JOURNAL

By Joel Rosenblatt

PALO ALTO – Tom Wise has left Cooley Godward to join Greenberg Traurig’s Palo Alto office as a partner in its real estate group.

Wise, 53, helps life science and technology companies buy, sell, lease and finance laboratories, manufacturing facilities and office space.

Before joining Greenberg Traurig she spent seven years as a partner at Cooley Godward and, before that, 15 years as a partner at Pillsbury Winthrop.

Wise also specializes in structured finance – or transactions designed to optimize tax and accounting results according to a client’s financial needs – any synthetic leases, which are off-balance-sheet arrangements that operate as a lease for financial reporting services and as a loan for tax purposes.

That practice has come under heightened scrutiny and fallen out of favor since the corporate scandals of the last few years.

“I’m a real real-estate Lawyer,” Wise says.

Most local Silicon Valley firms don’t have national real estate practices. Greenberg Traurig does, she says, and the Palo Alto office’s 15 lawyers plan to hire more Silicon Valley veterans soon.

Greenberg Traurig’s valley lawyers will go after “all of the work for these companies so they don’t have to leap to other firms to take care of all their legal needs,” Wise says.

In the near future, that means trying to strike a balance between real estate, corporate work and general and intellectual property litigation.

“I’m tired of having my practice area get short shift,” Wise says.

Wise said clients Agilent Technologies, Nektar Therapeutics, VeriFone Inc., nVidia Corp. and Genencor International, Inc. will follow her to Greenberg Traurig.

Todd Rumberger, managing partner of Greenberg Traurig’s Palo Alto office, said the firm will soon rent more office space and continue to hire “younger, hungrier partners interested in growing their practices.”

Since January, Cooley has lost nine partners in various practice groups to larger national or international firms like Greenberg Traurig. Wise is the latest of those partners to say many of her clients could benefit from a firm with a broader geographic reach.

“I really like Cooley,” she says. “I was happy to stay there for as long as I did, but at some point it makes some sense to take your practice to another arena. And I’m not sure if Cooley is going to make the jump to a national arena.”

Cooley Spokeswoman Christine Wherry declined to comment for this article. Senior partners at Cooley have repeatedly responded to the criticism by saying Cooley remains open to merger possibilities but will not grow simply to match the size or breadth of competitors.

Miami-based Greenberg Traurig opened its Orange County and Silicon Valley offices in February to complement its first and only other location in the state, a four-year-old, 70-attorney outpost in Los Angeles.

Firmwide, Greenberg Traurig employs 1,000 lawyers in 24 offices. According to Rumberger, the firm is the 12th largest in the country.