The Recorder Profiles Partner Jorge del Calvo and Pillsbury’s Corporate Technology Practice

Since 2000, del Calvo is tied for the lead for the number of completed issuer-led technology IPOs. IPOs than any other lawyer apart from Fenwick & West’s Gordon Davidson. In addition to IPOs, his practice also includes a broad array of corporate and securities matters. For instance, del Calvo and fellow Silicon Valley-based corporate partner Allison Leopold Tilley represented information technology company Synnex Corp. in its $505 million purchase of IBM Corp.'s customer care outsourcing business in 2013.

Focusing on venture-fund formation and private-equity work in her practice, Leopold Tilley advised Notify Technology on its sale to Globo at the end of 2013 and Mission West Properties on its $1.3 billion sale to DivcoWest and TPG Real Estate.

Both del Calvo and Leopold Tilley agreed that Pillsbury’s international footprint gives the firm a strong advantage. “We were the only [global] tech firm. The tech firms have been struggling ever since to catch up,” del Calvo said.

Leopold Tilley added, “All the startups from day one are international because they'll have a back end in China or Vietnam and operations in Russia. The last thing in the world a startup wants is to be working with multiple law firms.”

Adam Tachner, vice president and general counsel of InvenSense Inc., praised del Calvo’s “quiet wisdom” and his ability to “turn away from all the distractions and, amidst all the work that still needed to be done, focus.” Having worked with del Calvo and his team since he was at semiconductor maker Atheros, Tachner said he keeps coming back to them because they quickly ramp up on his company's issues. “They don't tend to cycle through a lot of people.”

Lateral hires, such as Alan Kalin, who joined the Silicon Valley corporate practice in March 2014, point to del Calvo and the firm’s stable group of technology-focused corporate partners, which includes long-time partners Leopold Tilley, Stanley Pierson and Davina Kaile, as their primary reason for joining Pillsbury.

“It's really statistically unusual to have that kind of stability in a group,” said legal recruiter Larry Watanabe.

Del Calvo explained that the team sticks together because the more senior lawyers share work and credit with junior lawyers. “To retain people like that you really have to give them the opportunity to shine—if you can do that your service is so much better,” he said.