Miles Weiss and Joel Rosenblatt of Bloomberg News report on Larry Sonsini, chairman of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, a 600-lawyer legal firm in Silicon Valley.
The company is under investigation because of the back-dating scandal. Wilson Sonsini lawyers have served on the boards of more than 30 companies since the mid-1990s, including nine directorships for Sonsini ... Four of those companies -- Brocade, Novell Inc., Sanmina-SCI Corp. and Autodesk Inc. -- are among the more than 140 that are under investigation for options abuses.
His company is also linked to the HP scandal. The US Congress called him to testify: Lawmakers focused on his advice that detectives hired by the company were "within legal limits" in using tactics such as adopting false identities to get phone records.
This law firm developed the practice of sitting on the boards of companies, keeping the corporation's records, providing advice and services, and taking stock as payment for the same price as founders and executives; i.e., at a very favorable price.
Comments