The following is an excerpt from Practice Perspectives: Vault's Guide to Legal Practice Areas.
Alexis Savini is an associate in Orrick’s technology companies group (TCG), where she partners with innovative founders to help them navigate complex legal challenges while scaling sustainably. Alexis advises startups and emerging growth companies at all stages, from formation through financing and beyond, with a focus on venture capital transactions and general corporate governance.
Describe your practice area and what it entails.
In Orrick’s TCG, we focus on supporting startups at every stage. This means we help new companies from the moment they incorporate through all their venture capital financings, everything that happens in between, and ultimately, right up to their exit. As a result, we handle a broad range of company matters including helping founders purchase their shares, negotiating with investors, drafting investment documents, and creating stock plans. A big part of our role is also acting as a centralized generalist team for any legal question that comes up. If a startup has a tax question, an immigration issue, or a complex employment matter, we connect them with the right specialists at our firm so our clients always have support for all their legal needs as they grow.
What types of clients do you represent?
We represent a diverse array of startup clients spanning many industries including biotech, fintech, apparel, food, or really, any type of emerging company.
What types of cases/deals do you work on?
On the TCG team, our primary focus is on venture capital financings. At the earliest stages, this often means helping startups with simple agreements for future equity or convertible note financings, and then as companies grow, we guide them through their Series A, Series B, bridge rounds, and everything in between.
How did you choose this practice area?
Growing up in the Bay Area, I was always surrounded by the energy of startups, so when I was considering law school, I naturally gravitated toward getting some early experience at a firm that worked with startups. My first job out of undergrad was a paralegal role with a practice very similar to that of TCG, and I loved it. What really drew me in was the sheer enthusiasm and talent in the startup space. It’s a bit more informal compared to more traditional corporate practice areas; the founders are passionate, the environment is dynamic, and even as a junior attorney, you get a lot of responsibility early on. You’re not just in the background as a junior on a TCG deal; you’re immediately interacting with clients and playing a central role on the deal. That hands-on experience makes it a really fun and fulfilling area to practice in, especially in the early years of your career.
What is a “typical” day like and/or what are some common tasks you perform?
One of the best parts of my practice is that there’s really no such thing as a “typical” day. In the TCG practice, we juggle a large number of clients, so what I do on any given day depends on what each of them needs. Typically, about 60% to 70% of my day is spent on active deals, including marking up financing documents, negotiating terms with investor counsel, and coordinating closings. The rest of my time is spent on day-to-day corporate matters, including helping clients hire new employees, issuing equity, and advising on general business strategy.
What training, classes, experience, or skills development would you recommend to someone who wishes to enter your practice area?
Any exposure you can get to a corporate practice, either during law school or through work experience, is incredibly helpful. Corporate practice is very different from litigating, and law school generally prepares you more for litigation than for transactional work. If your law school offers a corporate or transactional clinic, that’s likely the closest you will get to corporate practice during law school. If you have the opportunity to get some experience on a corporate transactional team during the summer, that’s a great way to get a sense of what corporate practice is really like. In terms of classes, courses like Corporations and Securities Regulation are useful, but in reality, you learn almost everything you need to know after you start practicing. As a result, I think practical, hands-on experience is the best way to figure out if you enjoy this path, and I think for most people, it becomes clear pretty quickly whether corporate or litigation practice suits you better.
What is the most challenging aspect of practicing in this area?
One of the most challenging aspects of this area is the sheer diversity of the practice. You’re juggling many clients at once, and each client can range from a tiny two-founder startup to a larger, later-stage company. That means on any given day, you’re not just working on one matter; you’re working on dozens of different projects. Staying organized and tracking multiple work streams at once is essential—and not always easy. On top of that, each client might have a variety of issues at the same time. You have to dive deep into some issues while also knowing when to bring in specialists for others. Even if you do bring in specialist help, you’re still the main point of contact for your client, so you need to understand enough to guide your client effectively through all kinds of different legal issues. Ultimately, the challenge is balancing all these moving parts efficiently and helping startups prioritize what really matters. They rely on us to highlight what’s urgent and what can wait, and that’s a big part of the job too.
What do you like best about your practice area?
What I genuinely enjoy most is the pace and the variety. Things move quickly, and the projects are often smaller, which means you get to play a really meaningful role in each one. From a lifestyle perspective, this can also give you a bit more control over your schedule. Instead of having one massive deal dominate all your hours, you have multiple deals that you can prioritize and manage with slightly more flexibility. There’s definitely urgency to our deals, but in general, you have more flexibility and variety than in many other corporate practices, which keeps things interesting and dynamic.
What misconceptions exist about your practice area?
I think one common misconception is that a transactional practice, and especially a TCG-style startup practice, is going to overwhelm your personal life. Startups do move quickly and things often tend to be time-sensitive, but from my experience, if you have the right systems in place and you’re disciplined about setting expectations and boundaries, you can make it a sustainable practice.
How do you see this practice area evolving in the future?
I think it’s obvious that AI is going to transform our practice. I’ve mentioned how crucial organization and project management are, and AI is already helping us streamline these aspects of the job. In the startup world, efficiency is key because our clients often have tighter budgets than large corporations do. Better legal assistance tools will allow lawyers like me to serve even more startups at once without sacrificing quality. AI won’t replace us, but it’ll help us focus more on the substantive legal issues and less on the routine operational tasks, like managing signatures or closings, that take up time but don’t always require attorney attention.