Law Firms Screwed Up Also
from the lessons-learned dept
Fortune has an article all about what happened at the well-known Silicon Valley law firm Cooley Godward during the boom and bust. They followed the pattern of many law firms (in fact, they admit that many of their decisions were based on the criteria of "well, other firms in the area are doing this...") and started focusing on getting equity from their startup clients. However, they went beyond even that. Once they realized that there was so much money to be made from equity in pre-IPO companies, they actually started firing their stable clients who didn't offer the same sort of upside. Suddenly, they were telling investment banks and Fortune 500 companies (who they had a strong history of working with) that they didn't want any more of their business. Not surprisingly, this strategy has since backfired as they try to crawl back to those stable companies they brushed off. The headline of the article suggests that the firm "got screwed", but like most everyone involved in the tech industry, it seems that they really screwed up themselves.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
