His focus is on corporate transactions and their financing, financial restructurings, as well as tax audits and tax litigation. The tax support of growth companies at all stages has become an increasingly larger part of his work in recent years. U.S. flips, management incentivization, financing rounds, and exits are just some of the areas in which Stefan has been active in the growth sector.
Stefan leads the German Orrick offices together with Christoph Brenner.
Michael’s practice covers executive agreements, cash and equity-based incentive programs, change in control and severance plans, 409A and other deferred compensation issues and 280G “golden parachute” compliance, as well as compensation and benefits structuring in the context of mergers and acquisitions.
Michael authors the chapter “Executive Compensation and Benefits Issues for Start-ups and Emerging Companies” within Bloomberg BNA’s Benefits Practice Resource Center treatise.
From 2005 to 2010, Michael was a statistician with a Stanford University School of Medicine research group.
Chris focuses in a variety of cross-border employment matters, including corporate immigration and workforce mobility strategies for multinational organizations. From startup ventures to large Fortune 500 companies and international conglomerates, he has represented clients across a diverse range of industries, including technology, banking and financial services, energy, manufacturing, retail and e-commerce, insurance, logistics and transportation, and academic institutions, among others.
As a member of Orrick's Global Employment Team, Chris focuses on international comparative employment law and assists clients on matters such as compliance, HR policies, global offer letters/employment contracts, separation agreements, etc.
Having practiced U.S. immigration and nationality law for many years prior to joining the Firm, Chris bolsters Orrick's capabilities and subject matter experience in the ever-changing corporate immigration space. To this end, he routinely advises HR and management teams on I-9 compliance, procurement of work authorization for foreign national talent, and the immigration-related impact of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and other types of corporate restructuring. Chris has successfully assisted companies with obtaining nonimmigrant visas for H-1B Specialty Occupation Professionals, L-1 Intracompany Transferees, E-1/E-2 Treaty Traders and Investors, TN NAFTA professionals, F-1 Students, J-1 Exchange Visitors, B-1/B-2 Temporary Visitors, and O-1 Extraordinary Ability Individuals. He also has extensive experience with the PERM labor certification process, immigrant visas, legal permanent residency (green card) applications, and naturalization/citizenship applications.
Daniel focuses on technology transactions, including drafting and negotiating a variety of commercial and intellectual property focused agreements, and represents technology companies in a variety of areas, including stand-alone licensing, software as a service, and software development arrangements, and corporate matters, mergers & acquisitions, and financings.
Before joining Orrick, Daniel was an attorney in the IP & Tech Transactions group at Davis Polk & Wardwell, working on a variety of intellectual property, data privacy and security, and transactional matters.
Before becoming a lawyer, Daniel spent several years prosecuting patent applications as a registered patent agent.
Jose assists technology companies with drafting, reviewing and negotiating of customer, vendor, partner, end-user and other contracts for a variety of products and services, including software, cloud service and software-as-a-service offerings. Jose also advises companies on open source software usage, including the development and implementation of internal open source policies and advising on risk and remediation of the use of potentially problematic software components.
Jose received his JD from Harvard Law School in 2017. Before joining Orrick, Jose was an attorney at Debevoise & Plimpton, working on various of intellectual property, data privacy and security, and transactional matters.
Chelsea advises clients on a wide variety of corporate transactions and debt and equity financings with an emphasis on advising developers and financing parties in structuring transactions to take advantage of tax credits and other available tax benefits. She advises clients in the wind, solar, carbon capture, and carbon sequestration industries.
Prior to joining Orrick, Chelsea practiced as a Tax associate in the Houston office of another international law firm.
During law school, Chelsea worked as a research assistant to professors Jonathan Masur and Daniel Abebe and served as an articles editor for the Chicago Journal of International Law, in which she also published her own comment on the regulation of space debris. Prior to practicing law, she pursued a graduate degree in geography with a focus on people's relationship to urban nature and political ecology and taught lab courses in physical geography.
His clients include technology companies of all stages as well as venture capital and corporate venture capital investors. Together with an international and interdisciplinary team, he also supports scaleups and multinationals in their expansion projects, with a particular focus on cross-border transactions between Germany and the USA.
Sven’s goal is to build bridges for his clients between Germany, Silicon Valley, and other international technology hubs, helping them achieve successful growth in the global market. His legal and business background, entrepreneurial spirit, and experience from more than 400 financing rounds and M&A projects across various industries enable him to fully understand his clients’ strategic and commercial objectives and to develop creative solutions to achieve them.
Sven volunteers with entrepreneur groups at the WHU Otto Beisheim School of Management, the RWTH Aachen, the Technical University of Munich and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology; he regularly lectures at the WHU and the RWTH incubation and innovation centers. In 2020, he launched the Founder Legal Boot Camp, a unique free-of-charge seminar program that educates aspiring founding teams from technical and business universities about all relevant legal pitfalls in the areas of company formation, financing, and the initial growth phase. Organized in collaboration with Germany’s leading startup universities, the Founder Legal Boot Camp now takes place three times a year in Düsseldorf, Munich, and alternately in Karlsruhe/Stuttgart.
Sven's work has been repeatedly awarded, inter alia
Chambers ranks him as one of the top 3 venture capital lawyers in Germany (2025);
the leading German market publication JUVE lists him as “frequently recommended” for M&A, private equity, as well as corporate advice and – since 2019 – ranks Sven as one of Germanyʹs top 15 attorneys for venture capital, the highest recognition for this category awarded by JUVE (2024/2025);
Legal500 Deutschland includes Sven as “frequently recommended” for M&A (mid-sized deals) as well as private equity (mid-sized deals) and ranks him as a “leading partner” for venture capital (2025); and
Handelsblatt/Best Lawyers list Sven as a Best Lawyer in the category Venture Capital (2025), and Sven also received their award "Venture Capital Lawyer of the Year – Western Germany" (2025); and
in the 2017 edition of its Innovative Lawyers Report Europe, the Financial Times named Svenʹs work to connect start-ups with Germanyʹs Mittelstand (mid-sized companies) a standout “for making bridges between Silicon Valley and Germany”.
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