Frederick Dorey

Fred Dorey is a special counsel in Cooley business department with more than 25 years experience counseling over 100 emerging growth private companies at all stages of development from startup discussions and incorporation through licensing, financing, corporate partnering and major collaboration transactions. Fred is active in Cooley’s Life Sciences, Clean Energy and Agricultural technology groups, representing a wide range of companies in those fields and related technologies. He also has extensive experience negotiating university licenses, sponsored research and intellectual property agreements.

In addition, Fred has advised a number of foundations, research institutions and individuals regarding their participation or investment in research endeavors, licensing and commercialization activities.

With his pro bono work at Cooley, Fred serves as legal advisor to the International Neuroethics Society and Willows in the Wind, a non-profit working with the families of troubled teenagers, and a Berkeley-based group engineering the conversion of breathing equipment into transitional ventilators for use in hospitals in developing countries.

Before joining Cooley, he was the founding president of the Bay Area Bioscience Center, a consortium of research universities, biotechnology companies and local governments organized to support bioscience development in Northern California. Fred also served as part-time in-house counsel for several significant biotech companies. Prior to that, he served as general counsel and corporate secretary for a subsidiary of British Petroleum, where he was chief legal advisor for the Fortune 500-sized company that handled all BP oil exploration and production in the United States.

He has also served as a regulatory enforcement lawyer and assistant office director for the Department of Energy in Washington, DC.

Fred was president of the University of Southern California Gould School of Law's Student Bar Association. Before law school, he served as a White House intern in the Peace Corps director's office in Washington, DC.

Fred currently serves as a director of the California Life Sciences Institute and is co-chair of the President's Council of the Gladstone Institutes.  He is a member of the MedTech Advisory Board of New Zealand universities, and the Beachheads business advisory group for the New Zealand government.  He previously served as chair of the National Board of Community Health Charities and as a director of the World Affairs Council and the American Liver Foundation.