Hogan Lovells has named corporate and finance partner Jane Ross as its office managing partner in Silicon Valley ahead of its move to a new office space in Redwood City. 

Ross steps into the role for Chris Moore, who was named office managing partner in October. Moore in turn succeeded Nate Gallon, who became office managing partner in 2017 when he joined Hogan Lovells to boost its Silicon Valley presence alongside Ross, Moore and three more partners from Weil Gotshal & Manges. Gallon and Moore are currently both listed as Silicon Valley partners on Hogan Lovells’ website. 

The leadership shuffle coincides with Hogan Lovells’ long-awaited move from Menlo Park to Redwood City, where it signed an 11-year lease as the anchor tenant on a new office space last spring to support its growth in Northern California. The new office will open for business 6 June, the firm said.  

The firm’s new digs are located in a redeveloped building at 855 Main, which is also set to house Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer’s Silicon Valley team. The Magic Circle firm landed in Silicon Valley back in 2020 with a temporary seven-partner operation in Menlo Park and later announced it was signing a 10-year lease in Redwood City to hone in on its work with US tech firms. 

Since establishing a presence in Silicon Valley back in 2008, Hogan Lovells’ team has handled matters including Oracle’s pending $28.3bn acquisition of digital healthcare systems provider Cerner and Adobe’s purchase of B2B cloud platform Marketo for $4.75bn in 2018. 

Ross’s own clients list includes Silicon Valley heavyweights like Meta, PayPal and Intel. She spent five years at Weil before joining Hogan Lovells in 2017. Earlier she worked at Dewey LeBoeuf before it dissolved in 2012 and spent nine years as a partner at Cooley between 2000 and 2009, according to her LinkedIn profile. 

Richard Lorenzo, Hogan Lovells’ regional managing partner for the Americas, said: “Jane has been a key part of the growth of the Silicon Valley office over the past five years, and I look forward to working with her in her new role.”

The firm's US and EMEA activity accounted for 47% of its total billings for the last financial year. It achieved record results in FY21 with revenue jumping up by 12.9% to $2.6bn and profit per equity partner by 25.9% to hit $2.49m. 

Hogan Lovells and Freshfields are not the only UK firms to target a Silicon Valley expansion in recent years – Allen & Overy (A&O) opened there last August with a seven-partner tech team from White & Case, while Simmons & Simmons set up shop in the Bay Area earlier this year with the help of Osborne Clarke’s former Silicon Valley managing partner Emily Jones. 

A&O’s move came several months after it first landed in California by opening an office in Los Angeles with a six-partner project finance and renewables team from Akin Gump last March. Freshfields and A&O were the first UK Magic Circle firms to open in California since Clifford Chance departed the region in 2007.