Intellectual property expert Carrie LeRoy has left White & Case to join Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher as a partner in Palo Alto, California.

LeRoy, who started working Monday at Gibson Dunn, will continue her practice at the firm advising clients on matters such as complex IP licensing, cross-border and commercial transactions, and M&A deals.

“Gibson Dunn has an exceptional platform for IP transactions and M&A, which is important to my practice and client base,” said LeRoy, who joins her new firm roughly a year after moving to White & Case from Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom.

It was at Skadden where LeRoy was named one of The Recorder's 2016 Women Leaders in Tech Law. During her nine years as a counsel at Skadden, which she joined in 2007 after two years in-house handling IP and commercial transactions at Marvell Semiconductor Inc., LeRoy served as the lead IP lawyer representing notable international technology companies such as Broadcom Corp. and Sandisk Corp. on a variety of multimillion-dollar deals.

LeRoy said that Gibson Dunn's domestic and international M&A prowess, which helped the firm land on The Recorder's 2017 Corporate Departments of the Year, was particularly appealing to her as an IP specialist. She noted that the firm's increasing representations on cross-border deals offer her the opportunity to do more work beyond day-to-day IP cases.

“Her expertise in technology transactions is particularly valuable in this region and in this economy,” said Gibson Dunn's Palo Alto partner-in-charge Benjamin Wagner, who joined the firm in 2016. “There are not a lot of people with her balance of technology skills and in-house experience. Those are rare commodities.”

Wagner said there is a greater demand for lawyers like LeRoy who have a comprehensive knowledge in technology transactions. As the technology sector becomes more advanced and complex, it has become increasingly difficult to manage IP properties and product licensing within larger transactions, he said. Many of those deals now have sizeable international components, and Wagner expects Gibson Dunn to continue to expand its presence into China and Germany. (Recorder affiliate The Asian Lawyer reported last month on Gibson Dunn's work advising Chinese semiconductor maker NAURA Technology Group Co. Ltd. to obtain U.S. regulatory clearance for an acquisition.)

Wagner, recently hired to conduct a sexual harassment probe for the California Senate, added that Gibson Dunn now has about 40 lawyers in Palo Alto. LeRoy is the fourth lawyer that the firm has hired to focus on technology transactions.

Gibson Dunn, whose roots are in Los Angeles, currently has roughly 1,240 lawyers in 20 offices around the world, according to data compiled by ALM Intelligence. While the firm has not yet unveiled financial figures for 2017, Gibson Dunn placed No. 12 on The American Laywer's most recent Am Law 100 list with $1.61 billion in gross revenue for 2016.

White & Case, which took in $1.8 billion in gross revenue last year, issued a statement wishing LeRoy well in her future endeavors.