Technology, Media & Telecommunications companies require savvy professionals who are comfortable with discomfort. Lines blur at the intersection of business, law, technology and regulation. The pace of change is furious. McGuireWoods clients benefit from lawyers and consultants with a keen understanding of the overlapping TMT sectors and the deep experience needed to handle a shifting array of legal, commercial and technical challenges.
Our clients range from household brand names with significant market share to innovative upstarts blazing exciting new digital trails. The common denominator is their need for wide-ranging expertise across disciplines: M&A, joint ventures and other corporate transactions; dispute avoidance and resolution; patent and IP litigation, prosecution and counseling; privacy and data security; public/private offerings; antitrust/competition; government relations and public affairs; labor and employment; executive compensation and employee benefits; private equity; international trade; real estate; securities; tax; restructuring and insolvency; private wealth services; insurance recovery; and more.
Across these disciplines, our TMT attorneys pride themselves on collaborating with one another and our clients to shape business-minded solutions that are creative and practical. We assist companies with everything from traditional IT outsourcing to developing bulletproof patent portfolios to counseling entrepreneurs on the tax implications of business formation to working with regulators to avoid potentially ruinous entanglements.
That is not, however, the whole story. Today, every business is a digital business. Given that reality, two things set McGuireWoods’ TMT team apart: our industry-centric approach to serving clients and our full-service public affairs team, McGuireWoods Consulting.
No industry we focus on — automotive, banking and finance, education, energy, food and beverage, healthcare, insurance, life sciences, media and entertainment, retail, real estate, security and alarm services, sports, transportation — is untouched by the tech revolution. To give just one example, banking is morphing under the influence of fintech-driven innovations transforming traditional business models at a breakneck pace.
McGuireWoods also has extensive experience representing security and alarm services companies and those doing business with them. Our attorneys regularly advise commercial banks and alternative lenders, private equity funds, commercial security and safety providers, burglar and fire alarm services companies and monitoring companies in connection with financings, corporate transactions, including mergers and acquisitions, private equity transactions and public and private offerings, data privacy, tax, licensing, restructuring, litigation, employment and contract needs.
Our ability to help clients “see around corners” by bringing knowledge from one sector to bear on other sectors facing similar risks and opportunities is invaluable. In addition, our consulting affiliate, celebrating its 20th successful year, fields an emerging technologies team with unmatched government and commercial experience in unmanned aerial vehicles (drones), self-driving/connected cars and other cutting-edge technologies.
The consulting team is a perennial in the top 20 of The National Law Journal’s ranking of 1,900 government relations firms in Washington, D.C. The group is unique for its mix of state-based government relations and D.C.-based federal government relations. In addition, TMT and other clients reap the benefits from our team’s infrastructure and economic development, strategic/crisis communications and grassroots mobilization services. We know what’s on the legislative/regulatory horizon, and we have the connections and experience to influence and shape important policies, which is invaluable to our clients.
McGuireWoods offers clients another important advantage: We are one of a dwindling number of firms with a significant in-house e-discovery team. Our litigation clients deserve the very best, which we believe should include one of the most important and costly aspects of litigation. And managing e-discovery requires that we stay on top of emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence, that tend to enter the legal market through the discovery door. We have found this is a tremendous asset for our TMT clients.