PALO ALTO — He's hardly a household name, but Larry Sonsini is among the handful of people who can take credit for creating the technology powerhouse that is Silicon Valley.
For more than three decades, Sonsini has been the behind-the-scenes attorney guiding such companies as Apple Computer Inc., Netscape Communications Corp., Pixar Animation Studios Inc. and Google Inc. through the thickets of stock offerings and growing pains.
Along the way he became a local legend: the favorite consigliere, the power broker, the lawyer who thought like an entrepreneur.
"There's always a lawyer in every community who's the go-to person for wisdom, someone whom everyone wants a piece of. In Silicon Valley, it seems to be Larry Sonsini," said New York University law professor Stephen Gillers, a specialist in legal ethics.
Given his omnipresence, perhaps it's no surprise that Sonsini, 65, finds himself linked to two very different scandals roiling Silicon Valley.
First came the stock options mess. Federal regulators are combing the records of at least 30 Silicon Valley firms to see if they illegally rewarded employees with options to buy company stock at artificially low prices through a process known as backdating.
Sonsini's firm has done work for about half the local tech firms under investigation, and Sonsini was formerly a director at Brocade Communications Systems Inc., where two former executives have been charged with criminal wrongdoing.
Then there's the trouble at Palo Alto-based computer maker Hewlett-Packard Co. The HP board revealed that it spied on its members as well as on reporters by collecting their phone records. The disclosure triggered a criminal investigation and a shake-up on its board of directors.
Sonsini's role as outside counsel to HP is drawing intense scrutiny. Corporate governance experts were stunned by the disclosure -- reported by the Wall Street Journal and not denied by the company -- that he ran the board's emergency meeting last week.
"It raises new questions about his judgment as well as the judgment of the board members," said Gary Lutin, a New York investment banker and an advocate for shareholder rights.
"Even if you ignore the fact that he wasn't elected to anything, why didn't someone question the idea of turning their meeting over to the guy who'd told them not to worry about getting personal phone records without permission?" Lutin asked.
