David Thomas

David Thomas is a partner in Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati's compensation and benefits practice. For more than 25 years, Dave has provided legal and practical guidance on compensation and benefits issues to companies of all sizes, including their compensation committees, boards of directors and board special committees. Dave has been inducted as a Fellow of the American College of Employee Benefits Counsel (a national distinction for employee benefits lawyers who have made demonstrably substantive contributions to the field of employee benefits over their career) and has been recognized in multiple editions of Chambers USA: America's Leading Lawyers for Business, in which commentators praised his responsiveness, “unmatched ability to think outside the box to develop bespoke solutions,” and “strong ability to translate complicated matters in an understandable way.” His philosophy is that each compensation or benefits issue must be viewed through a multifaceted lens that takes into account all key constituents. Wilson Sonsini compensation and benefits lawyers pride themselves on considering the whole picture when giving advice, rather than just answering the question, "What legal action is needed to do X?" Dave places a high priority on his ability to deliver advice and draft documents in "plain English" so they can be easily digested: by technical tax and securities lawyers (because the advice and documents are technically accurate and complete), by in-house lawyers who are not tax or compensation specialists (because they are very clear), and by non-lawyers (HR and compensation professionals and the employees who the documents are intended to motivate). Dave spends much of his time assisting high-growth companies with compensation and employee benefits issues affecting recruiting and retention, primarily including the design and administration of equity incentive plans and employment agreements. Dave has substantial experience with public offerings, having represented issuers in 33 successful initial public offerings—which raised an aggregate of more than $10.1 billion—since 2010 and underwriters in an additional 26 during the same period. Some of the more notable of these IPOs include representation of Palantir in its direct listing and the issuers in IPOs for AppLovin Corporation, Forescout Technologies, BlackLine, GoDaddy, Box, Square, and Twitter.