The Tintri team, in happier times, rings the opening bell on the Nasdaq Stock Market.

Tintri Inc., once considered a so-called unicorn, flopped when given its chance to soar in Silicon Valley.

When the Mountain View, California-based data storage company went public in June 2017, the listing generated roughly $2.25 million in legal fees and expenses for Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, which disclosed in securities filings that it also owned 0.05 percent of its client's common stock.

Tintri now finds itself in bankruptcy court, having sought Chapter 11 protection in Delaware on July 10. A week ago, Wilson Sonsini filed court papers seeking to serve as special corporate counsel to the debtor, which is poised to be sold to Chatsworth, California-based DataDirect Networks Inc.

Wilson Sonsini received nearly $3.26 million from Tintri in the year prior to its bankruptcy petition, according to the firm, which the company still owes more than $1.2 million. Court filings show that Wilson Sonsini partners plan to bill Tintri between $785 and $1,450 per hour for their services, while counsel and associates are billing between $325 and $1,080 and $440 to $800 per hour, respectively.

Tintri has also retained Pachulski Stang Ziehl & Jones to serve as its general bankruptcy counsel in Chapter 11, according to an application for employment filed by the national bankruptcy boutique on July 20. The document reveals that Tintri paid $362,063.38 to Pachulski Stang in the year prior to its bankruptcy case.

The standard billing rates for Pachulski Stang partners are between $650 to $1,250 per hour, of counsel between $595 and $1,025 per hour and $495 to $595 per hour for associates. In the Tintri case, however, Pachulski Stang has agreed to an $800 hourly fixed rate for all of its lawyers.

Tintri's Chapter 11 filing lists $76.25 million in assets against $168 million in liabilities as the company prepares to sell the bulk of itself to DataDirect, which is being advised by Manatt, Phelps & Phillips and Delaware's Richards, Layton & Finger. Riemer & Braunstein and Delaware's Ashby & Geddes are representing first lien lender Silicon Valley Bank, while McDermott Will & Emery and Polsinelli have been retained by second lien lender TriplePoint Capital.

TriplePoint is providing $5.5 million in financing to Tintri that will allow the company to continue operating in bankruptcy until its deal closes with DataDirect. Tintri, which had already defaulted on another $53.8 million loan from TriplePoint, will use a portion of those proceeds to pay money owed to various contractors and employees. In June, struggling with a cash shortfall, Tintri shed 80 percent of its staff by laying off roughly 200 employees.

A Batch of Big Law Creditors

Those individuals are not the only ones left the in lurch by Tintri.

A list of the company's 20 largest unsecured creditors shows that three law firms are also owed outstanding sums: $146,038.56 to Silicon Valley-based IP firm Van Pelt, Yi & James; $140,289.84 to O'Melveny & Myers; and $56,412.50 to Sidley Austin.

Jonathan Rosenberg, chair of the securities litigation practice at O'Melveny & Myers, is listed as a contact for the firm on the filing noting Tintri's top unsecured creditors. Rosenberg is representing several defendants in a shareholder suit filed against Tintri in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. That matter has now been stayed pending the resolution of the company's Chapter 11 case. Wilson Sonsini has been counseling Tintri in that case and related litigation.

Tintri's stock price closed at $7.27 per share during its first day of trading on June 30, 2017, giving the company a market capitalization of more than $220 million. But within the past year, Tintri's stock plummeted a staggering 97 percent as the company cycled through CEOs and struggled to find a niche in a market filled with larger competitors.

Earlier this week, Tintri's stock price had slipped to 17 cents per share, valuing the bankrupt company at $5.5 million, a market capitalization that would make Wilson Sonsini's 0.05 stake worth a mere $275,000. Tony Jeffries, a corporate partner at Wilson Sonsini in Palo Alto, California, who is seeking to advise Tintri in Chapter 11, did not return a request for comment as to whether the firm had sold its stake in the company. Nor did Tintri's general counsel Guy Colpitts, who in May succeeded Michael Coleman as the company's top in-house lawyer.

In its application for employment in Tintri's bankruptcy case, Wilson Sonsini states it was initially hired by the company on Feb. 20, 2013, for general corporate work. Jeffries handled Tintri's IPO, whose underwriters are now being represented by O'Melveny & Myers in the stayed securities litigation against Tintri. (Goodwin Procter advised the underwriters—led by Merrill Lynch & Co. and Morgan Stanley & Co.—on Tintri's IPO last summer.)

Ken Klein and Thomas Barton, who consecutively served as Tintri's CEO, are both no longer with the company. Barton, a former CEO of Rackable Systems Inc., took over from Klein when the latter resigned in March. Barton quit in June.

Bankruptcy court papers show that Wilson Sonsini will continue to counsel Tintri on advertising and trademark disputes, data protection and privacy issues, labor and employment matters, general corporate and M&A concerns (including the pending sale of nearly all of its assets to DataDirect) and advise it in class action litigation related to the company's ill-fated IPO.

Wilson Sonsini's IPO Moneymaker

Wilson Sonsini has long been a powerhouse for startup IPOs in the technology sector. The firm famously advised Apple Inc. on its IPO back in 1980, as well as internet search giant Google Inc. when it went public in 2004. On the latter listing, Wilson Sonsini saw a $72,000 stake it took in the once small startup balloon into a $28 million return after Google went public.

As IPO activity has picked up in Silicon Valley during the past decade, Wilson Sonsini has continued to ride that wave and take equity stakes in startup clients that it helps bring to market, as noted last year in a story by The Recorder.

Most recently, Wilson Sonsini took the lead for Domo Inc. on the data analytics company's $193 million IPO on the Nasdaq last month, a listing that securities filings show generated $1.8 million in legal fees and expenses for the firm. Wilson Sonsini also advised online education provider Pluralsight Inc. on its $310.5 million IPO on the Nasdaq in May. That listing yielded $2.9 million in legal fees and expenses for Wilson Sonsini, according to securities filings.

San Carlos, California-based Allakos Inc. also raised $127.8 million through an IPO last week, one in which Jeffries was part of a Wilson Sonsini team that incurred $425,000 in legal fees and expenses for their role representing the biotechnology company. Securities filings by Allakos show that, at the time of its IPO, Wilson Sonsini owned 5,685 shares of its common stock, a sum worth roughly $225,012 with the company's share price currently trading at $39.58.