Eileen Marshall of Cooley. (Courtesy photo)

Cooley has hired veteran tax attorney Eileen Marshall from a rival Silicon Valley firm, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati.

Marshall, a partner, will divide her time between Washington, D.C., and Cooley’s Palo Alto, California, offices, the firm is expected to announce Tuesday.

“Cooley has always been on my radar screen,” Marshall said in an interview. “It was easy [to move] because in the tax space it was always a front-and-center name.”

Marshall said her familiarity with the firm as a competitor and relationships with Wilson Sonsini alumni at Cooley give her hope that she can become a contributor right away. Kathleen Pakenham, co-chair of Cooley’s tax practice, heralded Marshall’s arrival in a statement, saying Marshall is “one of the most highly respected tax lawyers in the country.”

“We have come to know Eileen well in working alongside and opposite her on numerous deals over the years, and she is a perfect fit for our collaborative Cooley culture,” Pakenham said in the statement.

Pakenham complimented Marshall’s work in the tech sector and with emerging companies. Marshall also counsels clients on cross-border mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, restructurings and a host of other matters, including incorporations and partnership formations. Marshall declined to identify her clients and any particular matters she expected to handle.

Marshall said she never seriously considered joining any firm other than Cooley, which was a move “many years” in the making, as she spent more than 20 years at Wilson Sonsini. She said her thinking about the move grew serious more than a year ago, as she decided that she needed greater independence at this stage of her career.

She said she has respect for her former colleagues at Wilson Sonsini and that she was not aware of other lawyers planning to follow her lead.

As a lawyer who works in the capital markets and M&A space, Marshall said she gave some thought to how a prospective economic downturn would affect her practice. She believes Cooley is well situated to weather an economic storm, she said.

“Truthfully, I really didn’t want to choose not to make move out of fear and being conservative, I wanted to do what was right for me personally and professionally,” she said.