Larry Sonsini Receives Business Law Section's Lifetime Achievement Award

• Publication year: 2018
• Author: By Paul J. Pascuzzi

Larry Sonsini Receives Business Law Section's Lifetime Achievement Award

By Paul J. Pascuzzi

We are pleased to announce that Larry Sonsini will receive the Business Law Section's 2018 Lifetime Achievement Award. The award is given annually to a California lawyer "who over an extended period has made significant contributions to the Section or to business law generally in the State of California and who has achieved high status in the legal community." The Lifetime Achievement Award will be presented to Mr. Sonsini at the California Lawyers Association Annual Meeting in San Diego. The Business Law Section presents the award annually at its breakfast, which this year will be held on September 15, 2018, at 7:30 a.m.

Larry Sonsini hardly needs an introduction to the legal and business world. As one of the founding partners of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, Larry is well known in the Silicon Valley, in the California business world, and well beyond. Some would say he helped build Silicon Valley's now-famous tech industry, by developing the recipe for how to build companies. Larry's service to the Business Law Section and to the business law community abroad makes him well deserving of the special honor of being the first recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award given by the Business Law Section under the new California Lawyers Association.

Larry was born in Rome, New York. He is the son of first-generation Italian Americans. When he was very young, his family moved to Southern California, where his father landed a job with Hughes Tool Company. His father climbed the corporate ladder to become second in command at that company. To this day, Larry credits his father for instilling a "very strong work ethic" and a "wonderful energy," perhaps reflecting the survival instinct that comes from an immigrant mentality. Larry's drive and will to succeed are very apparent from his success story of a career.

UC Berkeley is where Larry obtained his undergraduate degree, being the first in his family to go to college. He played quarterback and defensive back on the freshman football team, and as a freshman played on UC Berkeley's first-string varsity rugby team. Football and rugby, not surprisingly, fueled Larry's competitive nature in a way that would serve him well in his future legal career. But Larry knew he wasn't going to be a professional athlete, so he gave up sports to focus on developing a professional career, initially thinking about medical school.

Upon...