Mention the name Woodcock Washburn in Philadelphia legal circles, and the talk will be about one of the most respected IP firms in town. But try sending an e-mail about Woodcock. Chances are, the message won't make it through the recipient's spam filter. "We actually thought about changing the name at one point," jokes partner Steven Rocci. The e-mail problem is especially poignant for the firm's new--and first--marketing manager, Jennifer Smuts.
Despite the communication glitches, in recent years the Woodcock name has been gaining wider recognition. The firm tied with Jones Day as the third most mentioned in our annual survey of the firms that handle corporate America's IP work, topped only by much larger Am Law 100 firms. Woodcock received mentions from such corporate giants as Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft Corp., Wyeth, Sunoco Inc., and E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Company.
A small IP outfit beating legal behemoths only seems like an upset. Fortune 250 clients have been a firm staple since patent attorney Virgil Woodcock left General Electric Company in 1938 and founded a solo practice that grew into Woodcock Washburn. Building on its corporate roots, Woodcock has amassed a solid book of business. Until recently, Woodcock was content to be the big fish in Philadelphia's small IP pond, but the IP boom has changed all that. Woodcock opened offices in Seattle in 2000 and in Atlanta last year. With about 90 lawyers, the firm is now on par with other midsize IP firms like New York's Darby & Darby and Chicago's Brinks Hofer Gilson & Lione. Still, Woodcock is fighting to remain independent. This Thanksgiving, the firm plans on moving to a new office in the Cira Centre, a high-profile new building in West Philadelphia. The firm took 30,000 square feet more than it needs now, giving it plenty of room to grow.
When partner Dale Heist joined Woodcock in 1976, the ten-lawyer practice "was the biggest IP firm in the area," he says. Heist came onboard right before Woodcock added a wave of DuPont attorneys in the 1980s, bringing the firm regular patent counseling work. Among the DuPont expats was coŠmanaging partner Dianne Elderkin, the firm's first female associate when she joined in 1987. (Woodcock now has 18 female attorneys, including six of 24 equity partners.)
Still, not much changed at the firm until the late nineties. On the same day in 1997, two associates left the firm for in-house positions: Steven Samuels went to Unisys, and Michele Herman decamped for Microsoft. It was "one of the worst days of my career," says Rocci. Today, it's clear that it was actually one of the best days in the firm's history. Woodcock had done some prosecution work for Unisys before the company recruited Samuels, but the workload increased during his tenure. More significant was Herman's move: Six months after she got to Seattle, Herman successfully lobbied her new employer to use Woodcock for prosecution and patent counseling. By 2000, Woodcock had opened a Seattle office primarily to serve Microsoft. Eventually, both associates came back to the firm: Herman is of counsel in the Seattle office, and Samuels cochairs the firm's patent prosecution group in Philadelphia.
The Seattle office has grown to 12 lawyers and picked up some new work handling licensing and standards for The Boeing Company, and opinion work for biotherapeutic company ZymoGenetics Inc. Still, Micro-soft remains the office's biggest client, bringing the firm prosecution and litigation matters. Most notably, Heist is representing Microsoft in its defense of a patent case brought by AT&T Inc., which is on petition for a hearing at the U.S. Supreme Court. Heist won the case at trial, beating Cooley Godward Kronish partner Stephen Neal, but Heist lost the appeal. Gibson Dunn & Crutcher partner Theodore Olson is named, along with Heist, on the certiorari petition.
Business development in Seattle was low-key. "We don't do a lot of advertising, so we encourage all the attorneys here to join IPŠrelated bar associations, technology organizations, go to conferences, volunteer for things," says Michael Stein, who opened the Seattle office.
The firm plans on using the same soft sell in its year-old Atlanta office, where it will be competing with the largest IP firms: Fish & Richardson opened an office there in January, and Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner has been in town since 1997. However, since more than 200 bioscience companies call the area home, including CIBA Vision Corp. and Solvay Pharmaceuticals Inc., Woodcock is hoping there will be enough work to go around.
So far, the Atlanta office has only three lawyers. Wendy Choi was a partner in Woodcock's Philadelphia office; of counsel Eduardo Carreras was a trademark lawyer at The Coca-Cola Company who worked with the firm; and partner Christopher Arena came over from Cingular, which is now the Atlanta office's largest client. Arena had once turned Woodcock down. They "gave me my first job offer coming out of law school in 1989," he says. He opted for general practice experience at Pittsburgh's Kirkpatrick & Lockhart instead. Sixteen years later, Arena says he was ready to move back to a law firm, and his seeing Woodcock from the client side helped him decide where to go. "I knew the work ethic--Woodcock had always been outstanding in terms of response, work product, and timeliness," he says. "But I also knew quite a few of the people, and they liked working here. It's not a sweatshop." Arena helped launch the firm's new IP business strategies group last year. In addition to big corporate clients, the group is aiming for smaller companies that might not have in-house patent counsel, but need help leveraging their IP as a business asset.
Although Woodcock has always marketed itself as a full-service IP boutique, patent-related work brings in the lion's share of the firm's revenue, with an even split between prosecution and litigation. The firm has several cases pending in federal district court in Marshall, Texas. Rocci is scheduled for a March trial defending Dallas-based auto leasing company AutoFlex Leasing Inc. against epicRealm Licensing, a company that sold Web site acceleration technology during the dot-com bubble and is now suing Autoflex and a dozen other companies for patent infringement. Elderkin is representing Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Vistakon in a patent suit it initiated over contact lenses.
Woodcock handles a full range of IP matters for Johnson & Johnson. "There's not an area in which they don't help us out," says Philip Johnson, J&J's chief patent counsel, and himself a Woodcock partner until going in-house in 2000. Johnson worked for J&J as a solo practitioner in the late 1970s, then brought the client with him to the firm when he joined in 1980. "In the 1970s it was mostly prosecution and opinion work," he says. "In the 1980s it became litigation as well, and it has continued to expand in all areas since that time."
Woodcock hopes to keep growing. "We are definitely looking for associates," says Rocci. "We are desperately trying to grow [the Atlanta] office." But the firm wants to find lawyers that fit neatly into Woodcock's mature culture. Most of the firm's lawyers have technical degrees and worked for several years before returning to law school. "People really want to be here," says partner Lynn Morreale. "They had other careers, then made a conscious decision to go to law school and then do IP."
That doesn't mean the lawyers don't like to have fun--or what passes for fun at a firm filled with engineers. The only suit in the office on a regular basis sits pressed in plastic with a sign that reads "Break in case of client," and on Fridays everyone can wear jeans--but they've got to pay for it. Partner Lynn Malinowski, cochair of the litigation practice, organized a system in which the attorneys donate $5 to charity for the right to don denim each time.
In 2002 Woodcock had its first major upheaval. Seven attorneys left for Cozen O'Connor, which was building a new IP team in Philadelphia. Camille Miller, a trademark and copyright specialist who now cochairs Cozen's intellectual property practice group, told the Philadelphia Business Journal at the time that she wanted to "join a firm where her practice would play a more vital role."
The firm is still hunting for replacements. In October 2005 Woodcock recruited copyright partner David Wolfsohn from a regional litigation firm, Philadelphia's Hangley Aronchik Segal & Pudlin. Wolfsohn says that he chose Woodcock over offers from Am Law 100 firms because it had a national reach without the downsides of a larger firm with "layers of bureaucracy," and where most of the partners don't know anything about IP. This past June he won a nearly $19 million jury verdict--the firm's biggest this year--for Philadelphia insurance brokerage William A. Graham Co. in a copyright case in federal district court in Philadelphia. Pepper Hamilton represented losing defendant Thomas Haughey and his employer, USI Holdings Corp.
Partners say that they are willing to merge, but they want to find other small IP shops rather than a megafirm that will swallow it whole. Woodcock isn't interested in a merger that relegates any aspect of its IP practice to the sidelines. "Some general practice firms have brought in boutiques and done a terrific job of merging the entire practice, though that is mostly not the case," says Rocci. "The general practice firms are for the most part not as interested in the prosecution work as litigation."
Dechert, the other law firm tenant in Woodcock's new office building, sought a merger in 2000 and again in 2003. The first time, talks broke down over associate salaries, among other things. Surprisingly, Dechert balked at paying first-year associates Woodcock's $90,000 rate. Now starting salaries are at $135,000 at both firms. Woodcock won't get into the specifics of the 2003 talks, but Rocci insists that his firm is committed to remaining independent, a decision driven in part by the special needs of an IP boutique.
Independence hasn't been easy. Four of the firm's five founding partners have retired or died in recent years, and it's gotten harder to attract talent. There are other options in Philly for IP lawyers, including Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, and Drinker Biddle & Reath. Those firms boosted their IP practices by acquiring local boutiques--Akin merged with Panitch Schwarze Jacobs & Nadel in 1999, and Drinker took Seidel, Gonda, Lavorgna and Monaco in 2001. And general practice firms keep calling. "I can assure you that Woodcock is approached all the time," says Sabrina Sacks, a Philadelphia legal recruiter.
The new office in the Cira Centre is part of the expansion effort. Woodcock's old headquarters at One Liberty Plaza were spread over four noncontiguous floors, acquired piecemeal over the last two decades. The new four-floor office has nearly as many conference rooms as offices. Those can later be converted into associates' offices as needed, says Robert Guthrie, the firm's director of special projects, who has been working on the move over the past four years. The West Philadelphia location puts Woodcock at the doorstep of both the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University. Both are firm clients, as well as sources of potential associates. Whether the sight of attorneys in jeans sitting in the skyscraper near campus will tempt recruits remains to be seen.
