Bio

Richard Blake is a partner at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati and the leader of the firm's public companies practice. He practices corporate and securities law with a focus on public company representation, corporate governance, and public offerings. Richard has represented public and private clients across a broad range of industries, as well as investment banking and venture capital firms, and has been lead counsel on IPOs listed in PitchBook's "Top 10 U.S. VC-backed IPOs" for many years. Richard has extensive experience preparing private companies for IPOs as well as representing public companies. His practice includes all aspects of company representation, including counseling companies and their boards on complex corporate, securities, disclosure and corporate governance matters, fiduciary duties, takeover defenses, insider trading, public company compliance, stockholder activism, ESG initiatives, and mergers and acquisitions. Richard co-led the Wilson Sonsini teams that advised Veeva Systems and United Therapeutics on becoming the first two U.S. public companies to convert to a Delaware public benefit corporation. Richard is a widely published author and frequent speaker on IPO preparation, corporate governance, and public company issues. He is currently the Chair of the Nasdaq Listing and Hearing Review Council, which is responsible for making recommendations to the Nasdaq board on policy and rule changes related to issuer listing standards. He previously assisted as counsel to the New York Stock Exchange's Commission on Corporate Governance, which issued its final report in fall 2010. Prior to rejoining Wilson Sonsini in 2019, Richard was a partner in the public offerings/public companies practice group at Gunderson Dettmer. From 2000 to 2013, he was an associate and partner at Wilson Sonsini. Earlier in his career, he clerked for Judge J. Clifford Wallace of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and Justice I. Daniel Stewart of the Utah Supreme Court.