(L to R) Jessica Perry, Jim Kramer, Lynne Hermle and Jared Bobrow of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe.

Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe partners Lynne Hermle and Jessica Perry led litigation teams that fought off class certification for Twitter and Microsoft in two of the most closely watched gender pay disparity cases in the tech industry. Partner Jim Kramer defended PayPal from a pair of shareholder class actions. And patent litigators Jared Bobrow and Jason Lang won affirmance of Patent Trial and Appeal Board victories for Micron Technology at the Federal Circuit.

That resume landed Orrick as one of six finalists for the Tech Litigation Department of the Year as part of The Recorder's California Leaders in Tech Law and Innovation Awards. The winner will be announced at a ceremony celebrating all winners and finalists Nov. 6. The Recorder recently asked Perry, the leader of Orrick's litigation practice worldwide, how the firm is managing changing trends in litigation.

The Recorder: When a client comes to Orrick for representation on a piece of litigation, what can they expect?  

Jessica Perry: We're going to invest our time in listening to your goals, learning about your business and the problem you are facing, and work together with you to define a path to achieve your objective. Our clients today have incredibly talented in-house teams. Getting to the best result is a collaborative process. This includes talking with you about how you want to invest your budget for the matter. We'll also talk about ways we can bring analytics, project management and new kinds of legal professionals to the table to improve quality and efficiency.

You can also expect to work with a team that is fun and inclusive. Our clients and we all work incredibly hard, in a profession that is high-stress. We're fortunate to do it with great people, and we make sure we focus on that, too.

How does your firm gauge success on any particular litigation matter?  

Our guidepost is whether we achieved our client's objective, however the client defines it.

What ways is the business of litigation changing, and how are you adapting to those changes?  

I'd point to three fundamental changes:

First, with the growth of in-house teams, the rise of alternative providers and more sophisticated metrics, clients have many more options for how they staff their docket. We've responded by focusing on more complex matters where we can bring something distinctive and valuable to the problem.

Second, there's a clear recognition by clients of the value of trial teams that look like their customers and to whom juries and judges can relate. So, one of the most exciting developments is greater opportunity for diverse and female litigators to lead. Many of our clients are taking an active role with us in developing talent. In fact, one client recently worked with us to put on a trial school for the next generation of litigation talent, including diverse talent.

Third, innovation has come to litigation. This includes new technologies and platforms, new processes and new roles. We have a team of litigation professionals, from project managers to statisticians, who are able to take tasks off of the plates of the trial team while generating data that is informing case strategy. They're also focused on continual process improvement. For example, this year we rolled out a custom-built solution to manage privilege review to save our clients hundreds of hours of human review and tens of thousands of dollars. We've created new processes and matter management tools to handle complex dockets, multiple firms and witnesses, and millions of documents. This is an area that is changing incredibly fast, so we recently developed a "social network" to actively track over 600 emerging legal technologies and share feedback on what's most effective.