Many technology law gurus throughout Silicon Valley claim to have been there at the creation. William Fenwick can claim to have been there before the creation. While a student in 1968, Fenwick authored a dissertation titled "Automation and the Law: The Challenge to the Attorney." The paper's conclusions must have been happy ones, as Fenwick and colleagues (including now-retired name partner Henry West: at the time, a refugee from New York's Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton) set out to provide sophisticated legal services in the next high-tech mecca. After considering promising locations in Florida and North Carolina, the founders eventually settled on Palo Alto, and opened shop in 1974.

1. Total number of attorneys: 311
a. Number of partners: 69
b. Number of of counsel: 8
c. Number of associates: 226
d. Number of lawyers working part-time: 5
3. Please provide the number of attorneys in each office:
Palo Alto -- 252; San Francisco -- 51; DC -- 7; Idaho -- 1
4. Please provide the number of attorneys working in each firm practice area:
Litigation -- 85; Corporate -- 119; Intellectual Property -- 87; Tax -- 20
5. Number of summer associates: 69
a. Expected number of full-time employment offers: 64
7. Minimum billable hour requirement: 1800

When Fenwick & West's founders decided to head to the Golden State in 1972, it was just in time to help start the tech revolution. The firm is renowned for its ground-breaking work at the intersection of law and technology. For the past three decades it has been on the forefront of some of Silicon Valley's most newsworthy deals. Back in 1976, home computing pioneer Apple Computers used the firm to incorporate. That was just the beginning. Today, Fenwick & West leads the pack in the industry's hottest technology deals, including the largest Internet deal ever-VeriSign's $21 billion acquisition of Network Solutions, the largest software merger ever-- Symantec's $13 billion acquisition of VERITAS-and one of the largest and most significant IP litigation payouts of 2005-Compuware's $400M settlement with IBM.