Miami
Matthew concentrates his practice on mergers and acquisitions, private equity investments, and securities transactions. He also counsels clients on corporate governance.
New York
Erica draws on deep experience in legal ethics and litigation. She served as Staff Attorney with the New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct, where she investigated and prosecuted judges for ethical violations. Prior to joining Orrick, she was Deputy General Counsel at Foley & Lardner, advising the firm on complex legal ethics, regulatory, compliance, procurement, and other professional responsibility and risk management issues. She began her private practice career as a litigator at Morvillo, Abramowitz and Gibson, Dunn.
Erica clerked for the Hon. Peter K. Leisure of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and was an Adjunct Professor of Legal Writing & Research at Fordham University School of Law.
Düsseldorf
Robert has always been fascinated by new technologies and digitization. Pursuing his fascination, he focused his legal studies on media law, intellectual property law and data protection law. Prior to working at Orrick, he also gained experience by founding a company that provided a software as a platform solution and working for a German venture capital investor. His legal advice on technology transactions—in particular, SaaS and IP agreements, e-commerce-related topics, related assistance in mergers and acquisitions or core data privacy—thus reflects not only his legal experience but also his experience and fascination with new technology. Being an IT and IP lawyer with a very commercial mindset, Robert drafts and negotiates all sorts of IT and IP agreements, for small to medium companies and large multinationals. He advises on privacy compliance—in particular drafts, privacy policies, and national as well as international data processing agreements—or provides his knowledge with the assessment of the IP/IT and privacy matters in M&A transactions.
He joined Orrick in 2017 after working as a scientific researcher in the field of Data Privacy.
Paris; Paris Tech Studio
Paris; Paris Tech Studio
Ben is the founding partner of Orrick's French Tech Companies Group. For more than 15 years, he has been advising high-potential innovative companies as well as venture and tech growth investors on all their corporate private equity and M&A transactions in France and globally.
As such, he is involved in every stage of their development, from incubation and fundraising to external growth and industrial exits as well as public offerings (IPO, secondary).
Ben has significant experience advising French companies expanding into the United States, and assists them over the full lifecycle of their overseas growth. He also counts a number of American investors and buyers among his clients.
From his first venture deal in 2006, where he represented Lightspeed Venture Partners in Wikio’s Series A, which became Teads, a company he then accompanied for 11 years until its sale to Altice, Ben has led more than 330 corporate tech transactions. He has been involved in the main exit transactions in recent years, particularly those with a franco-american element such as Neolane/Adobe, La Fourchette/TripAdvisor, Stupeflix/GoPro, eNovance/Red Hat, Regaind/Apple, Zenly/Snap, Teads/Altice, Getaround/Drivy, Glose/Medium, Sqreen/Datadog, Lalilo/Renaissance Learning, Tempow/Google, Context/Integral Ad Science, Monk/ACV Auctions, Cajoo/Flink, Shipfix/Veson Nautical, Bereal/Voodoo.
Ben's leadership has contributed to placing Orrick as the #1 Venture Capital and Tech Growth practice in France (ranked #1 by Pitchbook in 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021 - CF News in 2024, 2023, 2022).
Recognized as a key lawyer in the market in venture capital and tech growth, Ben was ranked No. 1 in the "Top 10 Influential French Venture Capital Lawyers in Private Equity 2023" by Business Today. He was named "Lawyer of the Year" in the 2026 and 2023 editions of Best Lawyers France in the Venture Capital category. He is also ranked as a Leading Individual by The Legal 500 EMEA in Private Equity - Venture Capital/Growth Capital since 2020 and was voted as the most active tech lawyer in France in 2019 by transaction volume in CF News’ ranking.
Ben is the founder of Orrick Paris Tech Studio, a one of a kind office and working space created in June 2022 and located in the heart of the Paris Tech scene, which is the headquarters of Orrick's French Tech practice.
Paris; Paris Tech Studio
Paris; Paris Tech Studio
From Orrick Paris Tech Studio, Jean Gabriel advises startups, tech companies as well as VC funds on fundraisings, helping them navigate complex legal challenges.
Jean Gabriel supports founders, tech companies, and venture capital investors throughout their growth journey, covering areas such as corporate governance, incentive schemes, and M&A transactions.
Paris; Paris Tech Studio
Paris; Paris Tech Studio
Mayeul advises startups and high growth technology companies in raising capital and building their businesses from formation through exit. He assists founders developing and implementing effective corporate governance strategies throughout the life of their startup and issuing customized equity instruments.
Washington, D.C.
Rachel regularly advises clients on the applicability of federal and state laws governing internet gambling, sports-betting, fantasy sports and other forms of gambling and non-gambling gaming. She has experience preparing gaming license applications in over a dozen states for individuals and entities involved in sports wagering, internet gaming and advance deposit wagering industries. She also has represented non-gambling gaming companies in consumer class action litigations and arbitrations implicating gambling considerations. She counsels clients on the “gamification” of their non-gaming products and services, including NFTs and other blockchain technologies, and advises with respect to the laws governing contests, sweepstakes, and other types of promotions.
Before joining Orrick, Rachel was an associate at another global law firm. She also has experience counseling clients on trade controls, including CFIUS, sanctions and export controls, and responding to congressional investigations.
Silicon Valley
Michael applies his broad experience in venture capital financings, public offerings, mergers and acquisitions, strategic alliances, technology licensing, and corporate spin-out transactions to each engagement. He has undertaken over 300 venture capital financings raising an estimated $7 billion for his clients, recently assisting Auris Health to raise over $650 million in financings before its sale to J&J for up to $5.75 billion.
He also brings extensive experience negotiating strategic alliances, representing clients in significant collaborations with GSK, Amgen, Schering-Plough, J&J, Daiichi, Astellas, King Pharmaceuticals, and most recently Pfizer, Merck, Baxter and Dainippon Sumitomo Pharma Co., Ltd.
Michael was the lead lawyer on the initial public offerings for Illumina, Neurocrine Biosciences, Cytokinetics, Pain Therapeutics, NeurogesX, Sequana Therapeutics, Ciphergen Biosystems, Argonaut Technologies, and Microcide Pharmaceuticals.
Michael was also the lead lawyer responsible for negotiating many notable biopharmaceutical spin-outs, including Onyx Pharmaceuticals (Chiron-Cetus), Tularik (Genentech), X-Ceptor (Ligand Pharmaceuticals), Metabasis (Gensia Sicor), and as well on the reverse merger of Transcept Pharmaceuticals with Novacea, creating a new publicly traded entity.
San Francisco
As a Senior Associate in Orrick’s Technology Companies Group, Andrew leverages his experience as a general counsel, operator and investor to guide clients through all stages from startup to exit. He is a trusted advisor on board governance, venture capital transactions, general employment and commercial matters, conflict resolution, mergers & acquisitions and public offerings. Andrew also counsels venture funds in structuring deals and assists them in identifying and managing the various risks associated with their investments.
Prior to re-joining Orrick in 2022, Andrew was employee number 2 at a venture-backed food technology/CPG startup where, in addition to acting as General Counsel, he established the finance, accounting, HR and operations management functions of the company and served on the executive management team responsible for defining and executing the company’s strategic initiatives.
Andrew began his legal career as an associate with Orrick’s Technology Companies Group in 2016 and is the recipient of the Firm’s 2019 Alan Talkington Mentorship Award. He also has experience working for venture funds and technology startups and is an active angel investor.
Andrew lives in Colorado with his wife, daughter and labradoodle. In his spare time, you can often find him hiking, fly fishing and skiing.
Silicon Valley; San Francisco
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 Anthropic AI, 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 artificial intelligence, information technology, metaverse, fin-tech, SaaS, gaming, media and entertainment. His recent prominent counseling includes companies in the artificial intelligence, 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) and has advised Anthropic AI from formation through each of its financings.
San Francisco
In the corporate finance and securities areas, his experience includes a range of public and private equity and debt financings, representing U.S., Canadian, European and Asian issuers and underwriters. His transactions have included over one hundred SEC registered and Rule 144A public offerings of securities, ranging from investment grade and high yield debt offerings, convertible note offerings, initial public offerings, follow-on equity offerings and preferred securities offerings, venture capital financings and issuer tender offers.
In the mergers and acquisitions area, Brett has represented clients in all aspects of mergers and acquisitions transactions involving public and private companies, including friendly mergers, leveraged recapitalizations, tender offers, spin-offs, restructurings and purchases and sales of divisions and subsidiaries.
San Francisco
In addition to traditional project finance, revenue, general obligation and other tax supported municipal bonds, Eugene has experience with a variety of financing structures and characteristics, including private activity bonds, structured products, securitizations, pension obligation bonds, swaps and synthetic fixed rate bonds, and various reinvestment vehicles. Early in his career, he pioneered capital markets access for California public charter schools and advised governmental issuers, foundations, advocacy groups and policy makers in the development and expansion of public charter school access to tax-advantaged financing. He has also structured innovative philanthropic investments designed to lower facilities financing costs for public charter schools across the country,
Eugene serves on nonprofit organization boards, including: the Mural Music & Arts Project, an arts-based youth development organization he founded in East Palo Alto, California, to educate, inspire and empower teens through the arts; California Lawyers for the Arts, serving the creative arts community statewide; and the Flywheel Fund, an income sharing-based law school tuition assistance program. He also serves on the steering committee for the Just the Beginning Foundation's San Francisco Bay Area youth education and pre-law programs.
Prior to joining Orrick, Eugene was a public school teacher and science curriculum developer in the South Bronx and Washington Heights neighborhoods of New York City from 1993 to 1998. He is an alumni of the Teach for America Corps.