The place to be

Most recently, Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP announced that it will be moving from its current digs in Menlo Park to Redwood City’s ELCO Yards. There it plans to occupy roughly half of one of ELCO Yards’ four office buildings. Orrick is the eighth-largest law firm in the Bay Area, with 213 attorneys locally (out of a total of around 1,341). Currently occupying a couple of low-rise buildings near Highway 101, the firm has been attracted by Redwood City’s dense, transit-friendly downtown.

Goodwin Procter was one of the first large legal firms to move into downtown Redwood City. Back in 2018 that Boston-based law firm moved its Silicon Valley offices from Menlo Park to the then-brand-new eight-story office building located at 601 Marshall St., just across Marshall from Bank of America. Four years later, two international law firms — Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and Hogan Lovells — moved into the newly completed office building at 855 Main St. That building, which is probably best known for its one ground-floor retail tenant, The Baker Next Door, is also home to the software company Delphix, which, except for its one remaining retail space, pretty much fills the building.

Not long afterwards, in 2024, Davis Polk — another global law firm — moved from Menlo Park into one of the two “Box buildings”: the one closest to Redwood City’s Caltrain station. And then, after the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative vacated the building at the corner of Broadway and Jefferson Avenue (where Wells Fargo Bank has its downtown Redwood City branch) to occupy the whole of the recently completed building at 1180 Main St., the massive global law firm Latham & Watkins (with more than 3,500 lawyers, worldwide) either expanded their Silicon Valley presence or relocated entirely from Menlo Park to occupy the upper floors of 1180 Main St.

Although not yet here — their prospective new home has yet to be built — Cooley LLP, the second largest law firm in the Bay Area, is in negotiations with Lane Partners for space in that developer’s approved, but not started, seven-story, 228,000-square foot office-and-retail building to be built at 1900 Broadway. Cooley LLP today occupies some 150,000 square feet of office space on Hanover Street in Stanford Research Park, but expectations are that the company will shrink its Silicon Valley presence, and thus occupy less than 150,000 square feet if and when the 1900 Broadway project is built and the firm moves in.

Not to be left out, in 2027 Paul Hastings LLP plans to move its local offices from Palo Alto to downtown Redwood City. It’ll be leasing 45,000 square feet at 1991 Broadway: the three-story sandstone building directly across Main Street from the Hotel Sequoia that until 2010 counted UC Berkeley Extension among its tenants.

Finally, although not in downtown, Hopkins & Carley relocated to Redwood Shores from Palo Alto in 2022. At the time the firm referred to Redwood City as “one of the most accessible locations in the region.” Redwood City being halfway between San Francisco and San Jose, combined with its well-served Caltrain station, backs up Hopkins & Carley’s statement. Add in the city’s vibrant and very walkable downtown, the many new Class A office buildings that have been, and continue to be, built in the city, and the many new biotech and other technology firms in nearby communities such as San Carlos, Menlo Park and Palo Alto, and it’s no wonder that downtown Redwood City has become the place to be for firms providing legal advice and representation to technology firms of all stripes.