Brown Raysman Millstein Felder & Steiner LLP

Industry:

Law Firms & Legal Services

Description

Brown Raysman is a recognized leader in information technology law, with a premier clientele, including many industry leaders. The Brown Raysman IT Group is not a corporate department pretending to practice technology law. Rather, it is a practice area dedicated solely to one area -- information technology law. Both vendors negotiating against savvy customers and users making strategic technology investments require the same thing: Counsel who can provide realistic legal risk assessments and creative approaches to issue resolution. The Brown Raysman IT Group does exactly that every day.

Over 20 years ago, as a pioneer in what was to become known as "computer law," Brown Raysman took the bold initiative to establish a law practice dedicated to technology-related matters. With a continuing monthly Computer Law column in the New York Law Journal first appearing in 1981, and a periodically updated Computer Law treatise first published in 1984, Brown Raysman has a firmly established leadership position in the technology law sector. Over the years, the firm's expanding IT Group has continued its leadership role in the industry, with partners in the group regularly speaking and writing on important technology law issues.

The sheer breadth of knowledge and experience of the IT Group makes Brown Raysman uniquely qualified to address the needs of our clients, both vendors and users. The volume and variety of IT transactions handled by the IT Group adds to the Firm's knowledge base regarding standard market practices and terms for particular transactions. Additionally, many of the attorneys in the group have either degrees in computer science or hands-on experience in the IT industry, having worked as systems analysts or programmers. Others have worked in legal departments of leading technology companies prior to joining the IT Group. The Firm's extensive knowledge base, combined with the real-world experience of our attorneys, provides the IT Group with the unique ability to counsel clients on important issues they face with a keen understanding of the marketplace, and to recommend solutions that make sense in the real-world. We very often teach our clients about the technology at issue in a particular transaction, rather than asking our clients to pay for us to become educated regarding relevant facts and issues.

The IT Group regularly represents clients in agreements for technology development, procurement, licensing, distribution and transfer of software, hardware, and telecommunications products and services. As new technologies and licensing models emerge, the IT Group has addressed these changes proactively, not reactively, in order to keep up with the needs of our clients. We have developed a collection of forms for many standard IT transactions, which avoids the need to "reinvent the wheel" for each transaction.

The IT Group has developed significant expertise assisting vendors and users of technology. The experience in representing both sides in IT transactions allows our attorneys to anticipate the negotiation strategy of the adverse party, and to counsel our clients on recommended negotiation strategies. We can also advise clients as to how particular issues have been negotiated in similar transactions, and propose alternative resolutions.

The services provided by the IT Group extend beyond individual contract negotiation. We regularly assist clients in designing negotiation strategies to meet their business needs, including drafting and analyzing form agreements and providing education and training sessions on negotiating key business issues. The IT Group also regularly assists clients with creating and updating corporate policies regarding the use and security of its IT assets.

The IT Group works hand in hand with other departments of the Firm to provide a team approach to matters that overlap practice areas. This approach allows Brown Raysman to leverage the skills of the IT Group in matters that only partially involve technology issues. The attorneys in the IT Group are commonly called upon to work with the firm's corporate attorneys to address licensing and other IT issues in corporate transactions, including joint ventures and strategic alliances, as well as to perform due diligence in mergers and acquisitions.

Active clients of the firm's IT Group include leading Wall Street investment banks, Fortune 50 entertainment and media companies, leading financial services and insurance firms, top tier software and technology infrastructure vendors, and well known e-commerce concerns. Members of the IT Group are located in the firm's New York, Los Angeles, Hartford, and New Jersey offices, as well as in Toronto through an exclusive association with Mann & Gahtan LLP, and are routinely engaged in transactions that are worldwide in nature.

Published works by the firm's attorneys include: four treatises: Intellectual Property Licensing: Forms and Analysis; Computer Law: Drafting and Negotiating Forms and Agreements; Doing Business On The Internet: Forms and Analysis; and Multimedia Law: Forms and Analysis; and two monthly newsletters - e-Commerce Law & Strategy, and eSecurities.