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Founded 2018 · San Francisco · Series A–C counsel

The Bench.

Three founding partners, fourteen attorneys, six paralegals. The senior who pitches the engagement is the senior who closes it — and the one you call on a Saturday when a SAFE flips to a term sheet by Monday.

Book a Founder Strategy Call

60 minutes · paid · with a named partner. No associate, no screener, no sales pitch.

Senior partner working at a desk in the San Francisco office at night
Vol. 07 — The Roster Updated Q1 2025 Section A
An Editorial Note

Why we left BigLaw to build something smaller.

We started Whimislaw in 2018 because the version of corporate counsel we wanted for our own portfolios didn't exist. We'd spent the previous decade inside Cooley, Wilson Sonsini, and Gunderson — billing 2,400 hours a year, watching our names move from the cover sheet to the footnotes, and watching associates run three matters at once on timelines we used to own end-to-end.

The thing about BigLaw isn't that the work is bad. The work is excellent. The thing about BigLaw is the structure — the pyramid, the billable hour, the leverage — quietly determines whose name is on the call, and increasingly the answer is "not the partner you hired." That is a choice the firms made. It is also a choice we made, in the opposite direction.

Whimislaw is built on a simple bet: founders and GCs who are paying market rates deserve a named senior on every call, every redline, and every closing. We staff lean. We price flat. We close a lot of SAFEs. And — embarrassingly, for the firms we left — we like this more.

— E. Marquez, M. Chen, J. Okafor
Founding Partners

Founding Partners

Three names. Every matter.

The partners below are the named senior on every Whimislaw engagement. There is no associate-led hand-off, and no silent substitution at the staffing meeting.

Elena Marquez, Managing Partner
Managing Partner · Venture Capital

Elena Marquez

Previously: Cooley LLP (partner, Emerging Companies practice, 2011–2018). Stanford Law J.D. University of Texas, B.B.A. with highest honors.

  • California State Bar (active)
  • New York State Bar (active)
  • U.S. District Court, N.D. Cal.
Representative matters
  • Lead counsel on 11 Series B and C rounds in 2024 across enterprise SaaS and climate tech.
  • $220M Series C for an AI infrastructure company, lead-led by a top-three U.S. growth fund.
  • Counsel to the lead investor in 9 clean-energy financings totaling $480M (2022–2024).
Marcus Chen, Partner
Partner · M&A and Commercial

Marcus Chen

Previously: Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati (partner, M&A practice, 2009–2018). Berkeley Law J.D. MIT, B.S. Mechanical Engineering.

  • California State Bar (active)
  • Texas State Bar (active)
Representative matters
  • Lead counsel on 38 venture-backed M&A transactions, 2020–2024 (deal sizes $8M–$410M).
  • $180M sale of a developer-tools company to a strategic acquirer (2023).
  • Stock-for-stock merger of two climate-tech unicorns (2024).
Jelani Okafor, Partner
Partner · Employment and Equity

Jelani Okafor

Previously: Gunderson Dettmer (partner, Employment & Equity Compensation, 2012–2018). Columbia Law J.D. Morehouse College, B.A. Economics.

  • California State Bar (active)
  • New York State Bar (active)
  • District of Columbia Bar (active)
Representative matters
  • Designed equity programs for 240+ venture-backed companies, including 11 unicorns at engagement.
  • Lead employment counsel on 6 C-suite separations and 4 founder transitions (2023–2024).
  • Creator of the WhimiStack modeling tool, used by 1,800+ CFOs and cap-table admins.
The Associate Bench

Who you actually work with day-to-day.

Four associates, grouped under their supervising partner. Every associate has direct mobile access to their partner, and every matter still has the partner's name on the cover sheet.

Under Marquez · Corporate & Venture

Priya Subramanian

Senior Associate · Capital Markets

Six years at Cooley emerging companies. Closed 41 priced rounds in 2024 as the drafting lead. UC Berkeley Law.

Daniel Park

Associate · Venture Finance

Former Gunderson lateral. Specializes in bridge notes, SAFEs with MFN disputes, and post-Series-B preferred restructurings. Stanford Law.

Under Chen · M&A and Commercial

Rachel Tobias

Senior Associate · M&A

Led diligence on 22 closed acquisitions in 2024. Spent four years at Wilson Sonsini M&A. NYU Law.

Tomás Aguilar

Associate · Commercial Contracts

Drafts MSAs, DPAs, and channel partner agreements at the firm's median 19-hour turnaround. Harvard Law.

Under Okafor · Employment & Equity

Hannah Reed

Senior Associate · Employment

Counsel on 6 C-suite separations in 2024. Former in-house at a late-stage fintech. Georgetown Law.

Ifeoma Nwosu

Associate · Equity & WhimiStack

Runs WhimiStack onboarding for new clients. Designs option plans, 83(b) elections, and founder vesting schedules. UC Davis Law.

The Senior-Attention Promise, Quantified

Senior attention, not a pyramid.

2.3 : 1 Partner-to-associate ratio — the inverse of BigLaw's leverage pyramid.
17 Average years of practice across the three founding partners.
412 Financings closed across 2021–2024 for founders in 14 U.S. states.
4.97 Verified client rating across 340+ reviews on the WhimiReviews portal.

Chambers USA 2024 Spotlight Table — Emerging Companies & Venture Capital, Pacific region. Zero bar complaints. Zero malpractice claims in firm history.

"

The biggest misconception founders bring into a first call is that hiring a boutique means trading rigor for responsiveness. We built this firm to prove that the trade-off was always a choice, not a law of nature.

"

Elena Marquez Managing Partner, Whimislaw & Partners
Book a Founder Strategy Call

60 minutes, paid, with a named partner. We close more SAFEs and SPAs per quarter than 90% of firms our size.