When Silicon Valley was just a flat place between San Francisco and San Jose, William Fenwick had an epiphany: Computers were “going to be the most powerful force in the world in my lifetime,” he says.

In 1972, he followed his vision from New York, where he was a fifth-year associate at Cleary Gott­lieb Steen & Hamilton, to Palo Alto. That’s where he and three other ex-Cleary associates launched a firm to service the nascent high tech industry.