K&L Gates’ Orange County lawyers serve a wide range of major industries, including life sciences and technology, local and global investment companies and investment banks, service organizations and other entrepreneurial enterprises located in this fast-growing and highly diversified area of Southern California. Our office has a full-service practice and is composed of seasoned lawyers who have deep roots in the legal and business communities. K&L Gates lawyers provide experienced counsel across a variety of industries and practice areas, including corporate/corporate securities, healthcare, intellectual property, investment management and corporate governance, litigation, REITs, and taxation. Our Eminent Domain & Condemnation Litigation practice was awarded a Tier 1 ranking by the 2011-2012 U.S. News-Best Lawyers®.

Our corporate and securities lawyers represent companies from inception through maturity.  We have significant experience in representing publicly traded and privately held companies in complex securities engagements including private and public equity and debt financings, mergers and acquisitions, alternative public offerings and corporate governance.  Our lawyers also regularly represent leading investment banking firms in their capacities as underwriters and placement agents in securities offerings and as financial advisors in connection with acquisitions and dispositions.  Our lawyers have developed a substantial number of longstanding relationships with leading private equity and venture capital firms.  We routinely represent buyers, sellers, investment banks, strategic partners and investors in merger and acquisition transactions involving both private and public companies (including representation of offshore companies in both outbound and inbound transactions), as well as in negotiating and documenting joint venture and co-development arrangements. 

The firm has one of the largest investment management practices of any global law firm.  Lawyers in our Orange County office are focused on derivatives and futures, and advise hedge funds, registered investment companies, advisors and sub advisors located in the Southern California region as well as in major markets throughout the world.  With the enactment of The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, our lawyers are currently engaged in preparing clients for central clearing mandates, executing market-standard derivatives documentation, readying back office support and putting in place innovative collateral management arrangements to minimize counterparty risk.  Our lawyers regularly interface with leading exchanges and clearing solutions, and also closely monitor and represent clients with respect to regulatory rulemaking under Dodd-Frank.  We assist clients in the establishment of cost-sensitive prime brokerage arrangements which include derivatives and futures trading, securities lending and the shorting of securities, and tri-party control agreements among derivative dealers, custodians and funds.

In addition to advising 1940 Act companies and advisors, K&L Gates lawyers resident in Orange County provide broker-dealer advice for a wide range of clients and public entities within counties throughout Southern and Northern California.

Our intellectual property practice is composed of lawyers with significant industry experience who are assisted by resident professionals with advanced scientific degrees and bench experience.  In addition to assisting clients in the protection of trade secrets and other intellectual property through the procurement of patents, copyrights, and trademarks, our professionals assist clients in enhancing and protecting the value of their IP portfolios through efforts such as enforcement and licensing.  A specific focus of the department is sophisticated life science-based technologies and issues.  We represent private venture-backed companies involved with emerging ideas, public companies and industry leaders seeking to maintain and protect their inventive leadership, universities seeking to protect cutting-edge research and private foundations that call upon our experience in global health grant-making.

Our commercial litigation lawyers have been involved in a variety of complex matters at both the federal and state level and provide client support for our corporate, investment management and IP practices.  Our lawyers have experience in a wide and diverse set of engagements including corporate governance and fiduciary duty claims, IP matters involving trade secret misappropriation as well as patent, copyright and trademark infringement, financial services and distressed asset litigation and a comprehensive range of real estate and environmental matters.

Our sophisticated tax practice handles local, federal, and international tax planning for investment funds, companies, family offices and individuals and organizations ranging in size from closely held entities to some of the largest public companies in the region.  We handle all areas of tax planning from choice of entity, equity and nonequity compensation arrangements, to mergers, acquisitions, financings and reorganizations.  We work closely with our investment management group to create and design venture, private equity and hedge funds, and have represented investors in such funds, including the representation of some of the largest institutional and pension fund investors in California.  We also represent wealthy individuals and family offices on their sophisticated tax needs.