San Francisco’s Morrison & Foerster has quite an extraordinary claim to fame in the world of law.
“We are the only international law firm with a Web site in Hebrew,” says Gal Eschet, an Israeli associate at Morrison & Foerster, fondly known around these parts as “MoFo.”
MoFo has more than 1,000 lawyers in 19 offices around the world. The firm offers clients comprehensive, global legal services in business and litigation.
MoFo is “distinguished by its unsurpassed expertise in finance, life sciences and technology, its legendary litigation skills, and an unrivaled reach across the Pacific Rim,” according to its Web site. (Yes, MoFo also has Web sites in Chinese and Japanese.)
Thirty-year-old Eschet doesn’t fit the picture of a high-powered lawyer, but indeed, he holds degrees from both the University of Haifa School of Law and the U.C. Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law.
MoFo combines experience representing Israeli companies in cross-border business transactions and litigation with the high-tech focus of its Silicon Valley practice, explains Eschet. The firm advises clients in litigation, intellectual property, technology transactions, public offerings, corporate finance and other areas of law.
Eschet and Oz Benamram, a Practice Resources Attorney and Israel Practice Coordinator in MoFo’s New York City office, designed the Hebrew site together.
They are two of the four Israelis at MoFo. At any given time, the firm is working with approximately 100 Israeli clients.
“We had a growing Israeli practice, and we thought, ‘What’s the best way to show our commitment to this market?'” Benamram says, explaining how the idea came about to develop a Hebrew law Web site.
When MoFo put up its Hebrew site, it beat out most Israeli law firms, Eschet says. “The Israeli community was so impressed with us,” he adds. “It shows our commitment to Israeli clients.”
“In the world, most Israeli law firms have English-only sites,” explains Benamram from New York City’s MoFo office. “Very few firms have Hebrew content, even in Israel.”
“We’re not even sure if there are any Israeli Web sites in Hebrew,” says MoFo partner Michael Jacobs, laughing.
The site gets approximately 800 hits every month, Eschet says.
Jacobs, who has been at MoFo since 1983, is the treasurer of the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation. He has been to Israel numerous times, but confesses that he’s not fluent in Hebrew.
“Our clients really appreciate the fact that we’ve extended ourselves in this way,” says Jacobs, whose litigation of high-tech and intellectual property cases has helped to shape the laws governing emerging technologies.
On Oct. 31, 2005, Jacobs joined Eschet and Benamram for a one-day seminar in Tel Aviv on maximizing the commercial value of intellectual property.
Over 200 lawyers signed up for the full day, Eschet says proudly, adding with a smile that this was significant because “Israelis don’t tend to spend the day” at seminars.
MoFo does not compete with Israeli law firms, Eschet says. “Instead we supplement them.”
This means, for example, that one or two new legal articles are posted to the site every month, with new information, for example, about recent patents, changes in laws and upcoming seminars. The articles are professionally translated from English to Hebrew, after which Eschet edits them.
“We try not to spam people,” says Benamram, who’s a member of the New York State Bar, the Israel Bar, the Board of Directors of the America-Israel Chamber of Commerce, the Israel-U.S. Investor Advisory Forum, the Israeli Business Forum of New York, and the International Council of the New Israel Fund.
Visitors to the site will notice that they must scroll down on the left side of the screen instead of the right.
“The site signifies commitment,” Jacobs says. “It’s easy for our clients to breeze through.”