Fenwick’s Michael Brown Honored Among Top Corporate Lawyers in Los Angeles Region
Fenwick corporate partner Michael Brown has been recognized for his contributions to the Los Angeles business community at the Los Angeles Business Journal’s Leaders in Law Awards. The publication honored Brown among just five other finalists for Corporate Attorney of the Year. Additionally, Fenwick startup partner Sarah Chambless was shortlisted for the Leaders in Law Awards.
The 2019 Leaders in Law Awards honor the accomplishments of lawyers in private practice, as well as in-house counsel, on the role that they have played in the success of business enterprises within the LA region.
Brown provides counsel in venture capital financings, mergers and acquisitions, public offerings, debt financings and reorganizations to technology companies that are fundamentally changing the world through rapid innovation—and revolutionizing the way in which technology users interact with the world. His work on venture capital, IPO and other financing transactions have raised billions for his clients, and the tech acquisitions he has steered have helped advance developments in cybersecurity, digital currency, digital health, cloud computing and other key areas.
His recent work for LA and Southern California clients includes representing Relativity Space, a leading orbital launch company taking a fundamentally new approach to build and fly rockets, in its $140 million Series C financing; guiding Invoca, a leader in AI-powered call tracking and conversational analytics, in its $56 million financing; and representing Modern Animal, a company building next-generation veterinary care, in its $13.5 million seed financing. Additionally, he guided Alteryx through several milestones including its acquisitions of Feature Labs and ClearStory Data, as well as its $800 million convertible senior notes offering.
Brown’s leadership in helping to grow and foster Los Angeles’ technology ecosystem has been instrumental in enabling some of the world’s most cutting-edge companies to scale and thrive. He is one of the partners anchoring Fenwick’s new Santa Monica office—the firm’s first office in the Los Angeles region, launched to better serve the firm’s 200-plus technology clients in the greater LA area. Brown continues to provide leadership for the office, which opened in 2019, has added numerous clients and now boasts more than twenty professionals.
Sarah Chambless focuses her practice on technology companies, specifically in the areas of startup company formation, early-stage finance, technology licensing and regulatory considerations, venture capital investment transactions, and mergers and acquisitions.
She is deeply involved in Los Angeles’ startup ecosystem as an organizer, lecturer and collaborator. Throughout her legal career, Chambless has been dedicated to building up the tech startup community in the LA region, regularly mentoring entrepreneurs in the area and guest lecturing through the UCLA Anderson School of Business and UCLA Startup Accelerator. She is the first lateral partner to join Fenwick’s new Santa Monica office.
For more information, please see the full list of the Los Angeles Business Journal’s2019 Corporate Attorney of the Year finalists and Leaders in Law nominees.