Fenwick & West LLP Gordon K. Davidson Managing Partner What traits or attributes do you look for in an effective lawyer?

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2 Fenwick & West LLP Gordon K. Davidson Managing Partner Gordon K. Davidson is the chairman of Fenwick & West LLP. He advises technology companies, including networking, computer software and electronics companies as well as medical technology companies. His clients, ranging from start-ups to Fortune 1000 companies, include Cisco, Electronic Arts, Intuit, and Symantec. He was worked on more than 30 initial public offerings and acted on lead counsel in more than 100 mergers & acquisitions. Mr. Davidson has three degrees from Stanford. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a bachelor s in electrical engineering, then went back for a master s in computer systems and a J.D. As a law school student, he was also elected to the Order of the Coif. He was a law clerk to Judge Ben C. Duniway, Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, from 1974 to Q&A with Gordon K. Davidson What traits or attributes do you look for in an effective lawyer? I continue to look for some of the basic traits: attention to detail, intelligence, creativity, an ability to communicate both internally and with clients, and an ability to deliver crisp, practical advice. The other thing I think is important to the legal practice, particularly today when working with the high technology industries, is to be a problem solver. I think sometimes lawyers graduate from law school as issue spotters rather than problem solvers, but clients expect us to take the issue, research the law, and then make a practical judgment about what they need to do. So do you feel law school adequately prepares people for a legal career? I think law school does a much better job today preparing students than it did when I graduated. Law schools have much better substantive courses and much better clinical courses. Not only are there courses in trial advocacy, negotiation, and various pro bono clinics, but we re also seeing really high quality courses in capital markets, economics, venture capital financing and so on. I help to teach a course at Stanford Law School called Deals, where every year I bring a deal I ve worked on to class. They get a week or so to work on it on their own, then I describe what happened in the actual deal. That kind of practical exposure to real-world corporate law problems fills a void that existed in law school education when I was a student. We learned all of our law from cases, so we dealt with judicial opinions rather than practical, real-world situations. We dealt with retrospective views of something that went wrong as opposed to putting things together and making them work, the creative side of lawyering. What rewards have you found in practicing law? My practice is focused on Silicon Valley and the high technology companies that thrive here. The law is interesting; it s intellectually stimulating and challenging. In and of itself, that might not be enough to satisfy somebody for a career, but when you add to that the technology industry we work with It s fascinating to have a privileged, bird s eye view of the developments Vault Inc.

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4 View from the Top: Q&A with Law Firm Leaders Fenwick & West LLP in biotechnology and information technology that have changed the world. And I get to work with very vibrant, typically young entrepreneurs who have a great deal of energy and creativity. They re impatient, demanding clients, but rewarding clients to serve and they become friends. We often view ourselves as extensions of the management teams of the clients we serve, not just a vendor of legal services but part of the team. What has surprised you the most during your career? It s been a very dynamic situation in the law industry for the last five or ten years. The demands on lawyers are changing and the rate at which we have to serve clients has become so accelerated. We used to get a legal problem through the mail. We d research it for a while, write a memo, polish it, mail it out, and discuss the problem a few days later with the client. Today we get an at 10:00 p.m. and the client expects an answer by 10:30 to make a decision that night. The reaction time has been foreshortened; the demands of instant availability have really changed what we do and how fast we do it. Where do you see the industry headed? I think the legal industry will have to evolve to accommodate this change in the rapid flow of information and instant electronic availability. Law firms no longer have a monopoly on information; regulations, case decisions, and so on-things we used to charge to research and maintain files on-are free and available on the Internet. So lawyers will be expected to provide more value-added judgment, and I think the fee structure for that will evolve away from the billable hour model. Law firms have traditionally billed for every hour of research, in effect every hour of education. Now they ll have to do the education on their own and provide some other billable structure, perhaps by the project or by the result, perhaps a fixed fee by the month, to reflect that change in information flow. What advice do you have for attorneys who worry about balancing professional and personal commitments? Life balance is a continuing question for anybody in a service industry like ours. We chose to be lawyers knowing we would be in a service industry, which means that when a client has a problem, we have a problem. It means we re on call effectively 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. So I think you have to come to the law with that expectation of being in a service business. But you also have to devise a way to achieve a life balance. For me, that s been through compartmentalizing. When I work on a deal, I work very hard. I may work weekends and holidays. But it s important to take time off, too. I managed to coach my kids soccer teams for 20 years. Sometimes it ended up being a long, late lunch hour, leaving the office at 4:00 and coming back at 6:00. Law firms have to evolve to accommodate the requirements of life balance. Law firms now offer part-time alternatives. People sometimes go through stages in their lives where they just can t work full-time, but over the course of a career, their talents are too valuable to lose. We re better off with 60 percent of someone s time than none. So the law firms have to be flexible, and I think lawyers themselves have to be flexible, to cover for one another the way doctors share weekend on-call duties, so if you share clients, you re able to plan a vacation or a dinner party and know you have somebody who can cover for you if the client has an emergency. If you weren t practicing law, what would your dream job be? I would be a dean of students at a university. I like working with young people, I like the energy a university campus exudes. I would be able to use many of the same problem solving skills I ve developed as a lawyer without having to be on a billable hour clock Vault Inc.

5 View from the Top: Q&A with Law Firm Leaders Fenwick & West LLP We often view ourselves as extensions of the management teams of the clients we serve, not just a vendor of legal services but part of the team. Gordon K. Davidson Visit the Vault Law Channel, the complete online resource for law careers, featuring firm profiles, message boards, the Vault Law Job Board, and more. 67