Latest news with #Cooley
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Sequoia-backed Crosby launches a new kind of AI-powered law firm
The tech industry talks a lot about how AI is going to transform work. Legal startup Crosby, which just came out of stealth with a $5.8 million seed round led by Sequoia, is perhaps the most extreme example of what's coming that we've seen to date. Crosby isn't just making AI software for lawyers – although it is doing that. Crosby is an actual law firm using AI to provide legal services at a speed never before possible. Rather than selling tech to lawyers, Crosby has hired lawyers who use its internally developed AI software. It sells contract-review legal services, largely to startups. The company is currently promising that its AI software, with human overseers, can review a new client contract in under an hour. And it hopes to get that down even faster – perhaps to just minutes, according to its co-founder CTO John Sarihan, who spoke with TechCrunch. Ryan Daniels, Crosby's co-founder and CEO, is a lawyer himself and the son of two law professors. He cut his teeth at Cooley, one of the biggest firms that represents the tech industry. He then spent the better part of a decade doing general counsel work for startups. 'My last company, where I was the only legal person, grew from about 10 to 100 people, and I found that most of the time that I was spending on legal was for our contracts, sales agreements, [and] MSAs,' Daniels said, referring to the part of a customer contract known as a master service agreement. Contract negotiations and legal review were such a bottleneck at the company that they were the 'reason why we weren't growing as fast as we wanted to.' Today, contract negotiation remains a human-to-human process, which can take weeks or months. While there are a growing number of AI tools that help lawyers speed up parts of their work, Crosby's founders believed that the only way to use AI to really change the legal industry, was by 'building our own law firm in order to own the entire process, end to end,' said Daniels. Sarihan, who was an early employee at Ramp, set about hiring software engineers from the startup world, while Daniels began hiring lawyers. Today the startup employs about 19 people, including the founders. 'The innovation here is in the tech and in the people,' Sarihan said. The firm soft launched in January, the co-founders said, and it has already reviewed over 1,000 customer contracts — like MSAs, data processing agreements, and non-disclosure agreements — for fast-growing startups like Cursor and the sales automation startups Clay and UnifyGTM. Sequoia's Josephine Chen and Alfred Lin led the seed round along with Bain Capital Ventures with participation from a bunch of angels like Ramp co-founders Eric Glyman and Karim Atiyeh, Opendoor co-founder Eric Wu, Casetext co-founder Jake Heller, Instacart co-founder Max Mullen, and the co-founders of Flatiron Health, Zach Weinberg and Gil Shlarski. The stars aligned for Crosby to land Sequoia as an investor. Chen knew Sarihan from Ramp. She had previously met him through the co-founder of Venue, an AI procurement startup she had backed and that was acquired by Ramp last year. When the co-founders pitched their idea to Chen, she asked Sequoia's in-house lawyer about the idea, and that lawyer, Cindy Lee, knew Daniels from her time at Cooley. 'When we think about seed investing, for us, it's probably 70% around the team and 30% around the market, market dynamics, and the insight that the founders have there,' Chen explained. Given all the connections she already had to the founding team and that legal work is a $300 billion industry, Chen was down to disrupt it with Crosby. 'We had seen, even in our own portfolio [companies], how negotiating contracts can be a bottleneck for growth,' Chen said. Legal, in her view, is 'a bull's-eye case for the use of LLMs.'
Perth Now
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Perth Now
Transformers One gets disappointing update from director Josh Cooley
Transformers One director Josh Cooley has said a sequel isn't happening. The 46-year-old filmmaker had helmed the 2024 flick for Paramount Animation, though Cooley has now said the studio is "not interested" in making a follow-up to Transformers One. Speaking on a panel at the Transformers convention BotCon, the director said: 'I wish I had something to announce, but I do not. What I've been told is that Paramount Animation is not interested in making a sequel. 'That's what I was told. I wish we could. I have ideas, too. So it would have been cool. We'll see what happens. You never know.' Transformers One - which stars Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Brian Tyree Henry and Jon Hamm - explores the origins of Optimus Prime and Megatron as allies on Cybertron before a rift turned them into enemies. As war brews, their choices shape the fate of their world - and the future of all Transformers. When Transformers One released in September, producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura teased the film could be the start of a trilogy. When Collider asked di Bonaventura and Cooley if a trilogy was possible, the producer said: 'I don't think anything's changed for us. 'The truth of the matter is you never get to the second movie unless everybody shows up at the box office. We both said to ourselves, 'This is way too hard to make one good movie to start thinking a lot about the second movie.'' While the picture was received well by critics, Transformers One had a disappointing performance at the box office. On a production budget of roughly $75 million, Transformers One pulled in $129.4 million, making it one of the lowest-grossing movies in the franchise. Di Bonaventura – who has been attached to the Transformers series since 1986's The Transformers: The Movie – teased Transformers One had several plot threads about Optimus Prime (Hemsworth) and Megatron (Henry) that could easily be picked up in a future film. He said: 'Along the way, there were ideas that we were like, 'Well, that can't fit in here. Let's hold onto that. Let's not forget that idea.' Although I'm sure we've forgotten some of them.' Cooley agreed and added they were definitely playing with the idea of making sequels to Transformers One, but emphasised that he and di Bonaventura were going to wait to 'see what happens' with the movie. He said: 'I can't help but ... Yes, we were thinking of this one story for this moment, for this movie, but it's about towards the last year of a film where I can't help but go like, 'Well, how would this [to] naturally progress?' 'So we've got some ideas, we talked about a few things, and we'll see what happens.'
Washington Post
13-06-2025
- Business
- Washington Post
7 partners leave Willkie Farr, firm that made Trump deal, for Cooley, which fought him
Seven partners at the law firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher are leaving that business after it reached an agreement with the Trump administration and moving to Cooley, which successfully challenged the president's actions in court. The lawyers leaving Willkie Farr include Simona Agnolucci and Benedict Hur, whom the firm had called 'highly regarded rising stars' when they came on board in 2019 to help launch its San Francisco office. The moves, which were announced Friday by Cooley, add to an ongoing exodus from law firms that struck deals with President Donald Trump's administration to avoid potentially punishing sanctions. Trump issued several executive orders targeting firms that employed his perceived enemies or took up cases he disliked, directing that they be stripped of government contracts and their employees blocked from federal buildings and jobs. Firms have said these punishments threatened their ability to stay in business. Four targeted firms sued to challenge Trump's actions in court. Judges have struck down his penalties for three of them so far, including the firm Jenner & Block, which was represented by Cooley in its lawsuit. Nine other firms made deals with his administration to avoid or undo similar punishments, pledging nearly $1 billion in combined pro bono legal services for causes including aiding veterans. These agreements have outraged lawyers at those firms and across the legal profession. Some clients have moved work from the firms making deals to the ones fighting in court. And firms that made agreements have seen numerous employees leave, including relatively newer associates and high-profile partners. Paul Weiss, the first firm to make a deal with Trump, has lost several prominent attorneys in recent weeks, including four partners who left to form their own practice and others who soon followed them there. Last week, Damian Williams, the former top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, left Paul Weiss to join Jenner & Block, the highest-profile departure so far. His move was particularly striking because he was moving from a firm that made a deal with Trump to one of the places fighting his sanctions. The moves Friday involve multiple partners following a similar path. When Jenner & Block challenged Trump's executive order, Cooley took on the lawsuit at a time when many large firms were making deals with the administration or shying away from publicly commenting on his actions. Hundreds of law firms signed on to court briefs backing their peers challenging Trump's actions, but the country's largest and wealthiest firms were notably absent from those filings. Firms fighting Trump in court have been successful so far. Last month, a judge struck down his order aimed at Jenner & Block, calling his actions 'an unconstitutional act of retaliation' against the firm. Judges similarly struck down orders aimed at the firms WilmerHale and Perkins Coie. The Justice Department has not said whether it plans to appeal any or all of these rulings. A lawsuit filed by the firm Susman Godfrey is still pending, though a judge has temporarily blocked most of Trump's punishments for it. Willkie Farr struck its deal with Trump days after Jenner & Block filed its lawsuit. The firm's most high-profile employee — Doug Emhoff, husband of former vice president Kamala Harris — has criticized his firm's decision, saying he 'wanted them to fight a patently unconstitutional potential executive order.' The firm's deal left people inside Willkie Farr feeling stunned, according to Andrew Silberstein, who was an associate there and resigned after it was announced. Cooley said Friday that the seven attorneys moving there from Willkie Farr were going to be partners in its global litigation department in San Francisco. Hur said in a statement that the group was 'thrilled to join such a talented group of litigators.' 'We are thrilled to welcome this esteemed group of Bay Area leaders and litigators to the firm,' Rachel Proffitt, Cooley partner and chief executive, said in a statement. Willkie Farr had announced in 2019 that Hur and Agnolucci were joining the firm that year as partners in San Francisco, describing them as experienced litigators who would help the firm's clients. Neither responded to requests for comment Friday. The seven lawyers leaving Willkie Farr for Cooley were largely San Francisco-based. 'We wish them well,' a Willkie Farr spokesperson said in a statement.
Reuters
13-06-2025
- Business
- Reuters
Seven partners depart law firm Willkie Farr to join Cooley after Trump deal
June 13 (Reuters) - A group of seven partners is leaving Willkie Farr & Gallagher, which struck a deal with U.S. President Donald Trump in April to avert an executive order targeting its business, to join Cooley, which is representing one of the law firms fighting Trump's orders. Cooley on Friday said Simona Agnolucci, Benedict Hur, Joshua Anderson, Tiffany Lin, Jonathan Patchen, Michael Rome and Eduardo Santacana are joining the firm as litigation partners in San Francisco. The lawyers leaving New York-founded Willkie, which has more than 1,200 lawyers, are among the latest to depart from major U.S. firms that have made deals with Trump. Agnolucci and Hur, who were both leaders of Willkie's San Francisco office, and the other departing partners did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Friday. Agnolucci was also a member of the firm's executive committee. The New York Times, which first reported the departures earlier on Friday, cited an unnamed source who said Agnolucci and Hur had told others they were disappointed that Willkie had capitulated to Trump. Reuters could not independently confirm the report. A Willkie spokesperson said "we wish them well" and had no further comment. Some of the former Willkie lawyers have represented major tech clients on court matters. Agnolucci, Hur and Patchen were on Google's defense team in litigation led by the state of Texas that led to a $1.8 billion settlement. Palo Alto-founded Cooley is representing Jenner & Block in its legal challenge to a Trump executive order that restricted Jenner's access to government officials and threatened its federal contracting work. A federal judge in May overturned Trump's order, calling it an unconstitutional act of retaliation for Jenner's past cases and its employment of a prosecutor who investigated ties between Trump's 2016 campaign and Russia. Cooley CEO Rachel Proffitt in a statement said the firm is "thrilled to welcome this esteemed group of Bay Area leaders and litigators." Willkie Farr in its deal with Trump had agreed to provide free legal services worth $100 million to mutually agreed-upon projects with the administration and had pledged not to engage in illegal diversity-related employment practices. Eight other large firms have reached similar agreements with the White House. Willkie's leadership had said in an internal email seen by Reuters in April that the deal prevented Trump from signing an executive order that could have imperiled the firm and its clients, though it had acknowledged dissent about the decision. The first firm to settle with Trump, Paul Weiss, has seen at least eight partners leave since its agreement in March. Since the end of May, seven partners have left the firm to join a new firm, Dunn Isaacson Rhee, co-founded by former Paul Weiss partner Karen Dunn. The new firm has taken over from Paul Weiss in at least one case – an antitrust lawsuit in Nevada in which some of the former Paul Weiss lawyers are representing the Ultimate Fighting Championship, according to court documents filed this week. A Paul Weiss spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Dunn Isaacson firm is now also representing Google and Qualcomm in antitrust litigation, though Paul Weiss remains involved in those cases.
Wall Street Journal
13-06-2025
- Business
- Wall Street Journal
Top Lawyers Leaving Willkie Farr After Law Firm's Deal With Trump
A large contingent of Willkie Farr's San Francisco office is leaving after the law firm made a deal with the White House to avoid a punitive executive order. At least seven partners—six in San Francisco and one in Los Angeles—are decamping to rival firm Cooley. Willkie, which has about 400 partners overall, is the latest of several firms to face blowback after making peace with the Trump administration.
