Martin Korman

This firm remains at the top of the Silicon Valley mergers and acquisitions heap, and Korman is a big reason why. As leader of the firm's M&A practice, he joined firm chairman Larry Sonsini in representing longtime client, biotechnology company Genentech, when Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche attempted a $43.7 billion takeover. In January, he led Sun Microsystems in its $1 billion acquisition of server software company MySQL. Korman also counts Bay Area heavyweights Pixar, Palm and Hewlett-Packard as clients.