Ropes & Gray Strengthens Key West Coast Practices With Strategic Partner Relocations

In The News
July 12, 2012

Ropes & Gray announced today it is enhancing its West Coast investment fund formation, intellectual property and technology capabilities with the strategic relocations of Raj Marphatia to the Silicon Valley office. These relocations build on the earlier moves of private equity partners Howard Glazer from the Boston office and the addition of veteran intellectual property litigator Jim Batchelder, and strengthen the firm’s ability to service West Coast clients. The firm now has more than 70 attorneys in California practicing in a wide range of areas across 14 practice groups.

“We’re very pleased to be joined by such accomplished partners. Their collective experience spanning private equity, investment funds, and technology will be a great asset to our Northern California clients,” said Geoffrey Leonard, managing partner of Ropes & Gray’s San Francisco office.

“These areas are core strengths for our firm and these lawyers will help to meet the growing demand we are seeing from our clients on the West Coast,” added Mark Rowland, managing partner of the Silicon Valley office, which recently celebrated its 20th anniversary.

Ropes & Gray has one of the nation’s leading practices advising transaction sponsors and other participants in all aspects of leveraged acquisitions and related private equity transactions. The firm has also been ranked the #1 U.S. law firm for private equity fund formation by Private Equity Analyst seven of the last nine years and recently received the 2012 “Award for Excellence” for investment funds by Chambers USA.

Ropes & Gray’s intellectual property practice is recognized as a leader in the U.S. and around the world. The firm’s practice and lawyers regularly place among the industry’s leaders in rankings by Chambers USA, Legal 500, Practical Law Company (PLC), Intellectual Asset Management (IAM) Patent 1000, and World Trademark Review 1000. The 2012 Chambers USA Guide ranked Ropes & Gray’s intellectual property practice in California as well as nationwide. Ropes & Gray was the 2010 Chambers USA “Award for Excellence” winner for intellectual property, recognizing the pre-eminent intellectual property practice in the country. The firm is also nationally ranked in Chambers USA for its life sciences practice and U.S. News – Best Lawyers ranked Ropes & Gray in the top tier nationally for biotechnology and technology.

About the Partners:

Jim Batchelder is based in the firm’s Silicon Valley office and was named one of California’s “Top Intellectual Property Lawyers” for 2012 by The Daily Journal. He has over 23 years of experience litigating high-stakes intellectual property cases in district courts and the ITC. In addition, he has participated in reexamination and interference proceedings before the USPTO.

Howard Glazer spearheads the firm’s representation of private equity investors based in San Francisco and Silicon Valley. He represents private equity sponsors such as Bain Capital, Genstar Capital, and TPG Capital.

Raj Marphatia, who moved to Silicon Valley from the firm’s Boston office, is co-head of the firm’s private investment fund group, and focuses on the full spectrum of private investment funds, assisting sponsors in forming, operating, and investing such funds, as well as representing institutional investors in investing in such funds. His sponsor clients include ArcLight Capital Partners, Ascent Capital, Covalent Partners, Forest Capital Partners, Gottex Fund Management, Moelis Capital Partners, Monitor Clipper Partners and Pacific Equity Partners. His investor clients include California Endowment, Columbia University, J. Paul Getty Trust, Kamehameha Schools, Makena Capital, Pepperdine University, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Stanford University, and the University of Pennsylvania. Marphatia is also actively involved in transactional work in the financial services industry, including secondary transactions, M&A transactions, spinoffs and spinouts.