January 11, 2012

THE RECORDER

By Amy Miller

SILICON VALLEY – DLA Piper is bolstering its securities, litigation and intellectual property groups with a team of five partners poached from Reed Smith’s Silicon Valley office, the firm officially announced Wednesday.

Richard Scudellari, Armando Castro and Matt Oshinsky are joining DLA’s corporate and securities group in Silicon Valley. David Lisi joins the litigation practice, and Craig Opperman is joining the IP group. They are all starting this week. Scudellari will be a co-managing partner of the Silicon Valley office, along with Sang Kim.

“We are very focused on building the Silicon Valley office, with quality people of course,” DLA senior partner Gregory Gallo said. “I think we’re looking to add to all of our practices.”

Scudellari said another firm, which he declined to name, had courted the group for several months, but they opted to go with DLA Piper instead, due in large part to the firm’s international platform.

“The DLA opportunity was just too compelling,” said Scudellari, who specializes in emerging growth and venture capital. “When you think about large global firms, they’re probably not well suited to do emerging growth work in Silicon Valley. And the local firms that are active in that space are not really international. To have a truly international firm that is active in the venture capital and emerging growth space is really unusual.”

Scudellari said he hadn’t been looking to leave Reed Smith. He’d helped open the firm’s Palo Alto office in October 2008, with plans of growing the office to about 25 attorneys. But the global economic downturn put a crimp in those plans, he said.

Jack Nelson, managing partner of Reed Smith’s Palo Alto office, did not respond to requests for comment.

After the departures, Reed Smith’s web site lists 18 attorneys in Silicon Valley. “It’s been a difficult environment,” Scudellari said.

He represents companies, venture capital and private equity investors in financings, mergers and acquisitions, public offerings, strategic alliances, and corporate governance. Castro represents early stage to mature public companies in M&A, joint ventures, licensing and tech transactions. He also represents boards of directors, investors and investment banks.

Oshinksy specializes in general corporate representation of privately held and publicly traded technology companies.

Lisi represents U.S. and international technology companies in securities litigation and counseling, antitrust matters and complex civil, technology and IP litigation.

Opperman specializes in helping clients design, build, leverage and enforce their intellectual property as a corporate asset.

Recruiter Larry Watanabe of Watanabe & Nason brokered the deal.