Len Jacoby of Cooley. (Courtesy photo)

Len Jacoby, who led the transactional intellectual property group at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, is moving to Cooley's technology transactions group in New York.

Jacoby, who had been at Cleary since 2007, has represented a broad array of clients on mergers, acquisitions, divestitures and other transactions with an IP angle, including 3M, Alphabet and its Google unit, Western Digital, TPG Capital and GlaxoSmithKline. He started at Cooley on Wednesday after a roughly two-month break to spend time with his family, he said.

He said the decision to join Cooley started with informal talks with some of the partners he knew there, and the talks firmed up over time. Jacoby said both Cooley and Cleary had good cultures that emphasized collaboration and large teams of talented lawyers but said he was attracted by his new firm's record of growth and its ambitious plans for the future.

"Cooley has been around for 100 years and its focus is on the technology, life sciences and innovation sectors. And it has focused its strategy on building a comprehensive platform aimed toward such clients," he said. "I found the platform and the vision that they have for the future to be very compelling."

Cooley has grown in New York City over the years, with about 128 full-time equivalent lawyers in 2019, up from 80 in 2017. The firm moved last year to new offices in Hudson Yards, and other partners who have joined recently include trademarks litigator Jeffrey Greene, who joined from Fenwick & West, and tax partner Jeff Tolin.

Jacoby said he had been across the table from Cooley's lawyers and used to work with some of them at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, where he worked before Cleary and was part of that Silicon Valley firm's beachhead in New York. He said he has admired Cooley's "reputation and leadership" in IP transactions, and his new firm praised him similarly, with Mike Lincoln, chair of Cooley's business department, calling him a "rare and valuable asset" in a statement.

Clients who have worked with Jacoby include a who's who of global business, from banks like Barclays to bakeries like Bimbo. He said he advises clients on transactions and public offerings about their data, brands, content and other intellectual property; the entities he works with, Cooley said, include "companies, private equity firms, sovereign wealth funds and investment banks."

Jacoby said he "wouldn't want to speculate" on whether others at Cleary will join him. He said some of his clients had worked with Cooley before and others hadn't.

A Cleary representative said, "We are grateful for Len's contributions to our firm, and we wish him the best."

Cleary and Cooley are similarly sized firms with revenue in 2018 of more than $1.2 billion, although Cleary's profits per equity partner were significantly higher that year — about $3.2 million, compared with $2.4 million at Cooley. The American Lawyer is currently in the process of reporting 2019 financials.

Correction: A previous version of this story misspelled Jeff Tolin's name. The error has been corrected.