Michael-Moradzadeh

Matthew Poppe, a longtime commercial and intellectual property litigator at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, has left the Am Law 100 firm for the San Francisco and Palo Alto, California, outposts of Rimon, a growing boutique based in the Bay Area.

Poppe, whose clients include Chinese social media company Baidu Inc., e-commerce giant eBay Inc. and Palo Alto-based oncology equipment maker Varian Medical Systems Inc., had practiced at Orrick since 1995.

Though Rimon has office space for conferences, most of its work about 70 percent, according to founding partner Michael Moradzadeh gets done remotely. Lawyers set their own rates at the 90-lawyer firm, which Morazadeh and co-founder Yaacov Silberman left Ropes & Gray to launch in 2008, and Poppe said low overhead costs and a transparent pay structure were among the factors that attracted him to the firm.

But unlike many firms that do the bulk of their business via teleconferencing, Rimon cultivates a sense of community among the lawyers in its 17 locations, Poppe said.

I think a lot of virtual law firms or firms that get described that way are really just platforms for attorneys to work on their own, he said. They don't get to practice with others.

Rimon offers financial incentives to encourage its lawyers to collaborate, and Poppe said the firm's close-knit feel was part of what lured him away from Orrick after more than two decades.

For a long time I've been interested in getting back to a smaller work environment, said Poppe (pictured right). When I started at Orrick, our Silicon Valley office was brand new. We had about 15 attorneys. We were within the 15-to-25 [lawyer] range for a good five years after I started, and there's a particular dynamic and energy that you get out of that environment that I always missed after we became bigger.

Gabriel Gregg, an IP litigator whom Poppe befriended while serving as president of the Santa Clara County Bar Association last year, initially pitched him on joining Rimon at the end of 2016, when Gregg himself was about to move to the firm from San Jose's Robinson & Wood.

I got more and more excited about what the model was and who the people were, and how in particular the resources they provided and the practice area would mesh well with mine, Poppe said. I do a lot of patent litigation, but I'm not personally a member of the patent bar. Rimon already having an existing partner with a patent prosecution and [inter partes review] practice who I would be able to team with was a big part of what made me comfortable.