Silicon Valley; San Francisco
The Daily Journal has named Stephen one of the Top 100 Lawyers in California (chosen regardless of specialty). Stephen was Facebook’s first lawyer and has advised many other leading companies at critical stages of their lifecycles including Asana, Instagram, Pinterest, Warby Parker and WETA Digital.
Stephen cares about the teams he counsels and thrives on providing practical business advice. When The American Lawyer named Stephen “Dealmaker of the Year”, it recognized his corporate work and representation of Instagram in its sale to Facebook and quoted a prominent Instagram board member as saying that he “is an outstanding lawyer, but he’s also an outstanding business partner . . . someone who cares about everybody [who's] involved in a company.” In addition to naming Stephen to its list of Top 100 Lawyers in California, The Daily Journal has named him to its Top Emerging Companies Lawyers list, and Chambers and Partners has recognized and ranked Stephen in two separate categories for several consecutive years.
Numerous standout technology companies and their founders have turned to Stephen for corporate representation at all stages of their life-cycles. Most of his counseling is with technology disruptive clients in fast-growth fields such as information technology, artificial intelligence, web3, metaverse, fin-tech, SaaS, gaming, media and entertainment. His recent prominent counseling includes companies in the artificial intelligence, web3, metaverse and gaming spaces. For example he recently advised WETA Digital in its metaverse and gaming related asset sale to Unity Software (for $1.6 billion), has advised Anthropic AI from formation, and works closely with a variety of web3 related new startups.