PALO ALTO, Calif. — Virtual Law Partners LLP (VLP) has announced that David Lawson, Janyce Mitchell, David Roise, and Stephen Sullivan have joined the firm as Partners. “VLP’s newest partners further expand the firm’s practice in Commercial Lending and Intellectual Property. VLP is strengthening as well as broadening our range of legal representation for corporate clients,” said RoseAnn Rotandaro, VLP’s President and Co-Founder.
David Lawson, formerly a Partner at Troutman Sanders, represents financial institutions in a wide range of financing transactions, including structuring, preparing and negotiating loan documents in connection with secured and unsecured credit facilities, loan workouts and restructurings. He has extensive experience representing financial institutions lending to high tech companies, life science companies and borrowers in a wide array of other industries, as well as extensive knowledge of the intellectual property, life science, warrant and other issues that arise in those deals. David earned his J.D. from the University of Southern California Law Center and his B.A. from Dartmouth College. David will chair VLP’s Commercial Lending Group.
Janyce Mitchell, formerly Vice President of Strategic Patent Group P.C., focuses on intellectual property law, with an emphasis on patent prosecution. Janyce brings over 13 years of patent prosecution experience in the fields of computer software, architecture and networking, magnetic recording technology, magnetic random access memories, semiconductor materials, optics, and nanotechnology. Prior to Strategic Patent Group, Janyce was a partner with Sawyer Law Group, LLP of Palo Alto, California. Janyce received a J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley Boalt Hall School of Law, her M.S. and C. Phil. in Physics from University of California, San Diego, and a B.S. in Physics from Stanford University.
David Roise most recently practiced patent law as an associate at Fish & Neave and Ropes & Gray. David has technical experience in small-molecule pharmaceuticals, drug screening methodology, genetic diagnostics, biotechnological methods and products, stem cell technology, and medical devices. His practice includes patent drafting and prosecution as well as strategic patent counseling, patentability and freedom-to-operate searching, and patent due diligence. Prior to law school, David was an academic scientist, studying the fundamental mechanisms of protein and membrane biochemistry and cellular biology. David earned a B.S. in chemistry from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, a Ph.D. in biochemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, worked as a postdoctoral fellow in Basel, Switzerland, and was an assistant professor at the University of California, San Diego. David obtained his J.D. from Stanford Law School.
Stephen Sullivan, formerly the President of Strategic Patent Group P.C., focuses on patent prosecution and client counseling for high technology companies in various fields, with an emphasis in software. Stephen began his practice 17 years ago at Heller Ehrman White & McAuliffe. Before starting Strategic Patent Group, Stephen was a Partner at Sawyer Law Group LLP, and was in-house as IP Counsel for FlashPoint Technology. Stephen received a B.S. degree in Computer Information Science, School of Engineering, from Ohio State University and his J.D. from Santa Clara University School of Law.
About Virtual Law Partners
Virtual Law Partners LLP, or VLP, is a distributed law firm of 40 partners, all of whom have outstanding credentials and an average of over ten years of experience. Our state-of-the-art technology platform allows us to operate virtually, eliminating expensive office space and minimizing personnel as well as other overhead expenses. We pass along the savings to our clients. VLP attorneys, with education and experience comparable or superior to attorneys at other top tier firms, practice law at more prudent rates. For more information about the firm and our partners, go to: www.VirtualLawPartners.com . VLP provides practical, high quality legal representation for the 21st century.
