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Alumni Profiles
Richard L. Thurston, Ph.D.
Dick Thurston values direct and close relationships with his company's customers—and his company's law firm. The semiconductor industry is in the business of manufacturing billions of extremely small devices that enable vital processes needed by all of us to manage our lives. It's fitting, then, that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (TSMC), the world's largest and most advanced semiconductor manufacturer, employs a small but powerful team of lawyers to manage the highly complex transactional, litigation and intellectual property legal matters of a $13+ billion company.
At the helm of this effort is Dick Thurston, the Senior Vice President and General Counsel of TSMC and a former Duane Morris lawyer. Dick, who joined Duane Morris in 1976 as a law clerk and was an associate from 1980 to 1984, now leads 30 in-house lawyers and 30 staff to manage the legal needs of a company that produces billions of computer chips a year, more than any other semiconductor foundry. A doctor of Chinese History and two-time recipient of the AsiaLaw Taiwan In-House Counsel Award, Dick recently spoke to Spotlight from TSMC's headquarters in Hsinchu—the high-technology industry center located in the northwest corner of Taiwan—about the company's strategic relationship with Duane Morris.
Q: TSMC has a very customer-oriented culture that involves interaction with customers at many levels. Why are those direct and close relationships with your customers so important?
A: My mentors at Duane Morris [former partners] Henry Reath, Roland Morris and Vince Garrity made it clear that business development does not stop when you open a client number. They said young lawyers should strive to become trusted business advisors in the business/transactional law area. You have to always look at the relationship. You have to earn their trust. That's the factor that distinguishes you from other companies or other law firms.
All the first-tier law firms have excellent capabilities when it comes to black-letter law. But then it's that extra bit that really matters to the client. As the client of Duane Morris, we feel that is a very important factor in the relationship.
Take someone like [TSMC relationship partner] Frank A. Luchak. He's always looking out for our interests, sending us information about new developments in the business to our attention. That's the way TSMC approaches our customers, and that is what distinguishes us from our competitors.
Q: There are only 70 people in the TSMC legal department in the United States, Japan, Europe, Taiwan and China. That is incredibly lean. Can you describe the strategic value of this, and how you have been able to achieve it?
A: Yes, it's very lean. This year, we're likely to be a slightly-more-than $13 billion company. We have only 30 licensed practicing attorneys (the remaining 40 are professional staff, including engineers), which means we have $250 million of revenue per lawyer. We have outstanding people who work very hard. We manage by assessing what can be done in-house and what firms are best suited for the rest of the work. Due diligence and discovery are time-consuming and expensive, so we try to do that in-house. Duane Morris' knowledge of our business and its IP and litigation skills are major resources. I count Duane Morris as our lead U.S. firm as a general purpose firm, so whenever we have issues, we usually take it to Duane Morris.
Q: What sorts of complex legal issues do you run into?
A: We have about 700 customers who outsource their designs, and we build semiconductor wafers for them to their specifications. We have our own proprietary leading-edge technology that we go to great lengths to protect. We spend billions of dollars on research and development on each generation of technology that we develop. Protecting our IP is very important. In addition, our customers are competitors with each other. We have to make sure that we keep their trade secrets separated at all times. We have people here working just on university research and development. The licensing, patent and infringement issues are extremely complex.
Q: Do you think the chip-making business will resume growth?
A: Right now, across the board, the technology industry is going through a major sea change. The consuming public has become very dependent on technology. A lot of the science-fiction stuff talked about in the 1960s is now real. The continuing miniaturization of technology is going to be essential to the life sciences industry, for example. As our business grows and changes, our lawyers have to become even more business-savvy and informed of these developments.
Q: What do you enjoy doing when you are not working?
A: In Taiwan, my wife and I love to go sightseeing. Last spring, we went out to a bamboo grove to cut [edible] bamboo shoots on a mountainside. We happened to find two different kinds of orchids. Taiwan is the home of thousands of varieties of orchids. You have to be cautious: There are wild boar on the mountainside that can charge you, and a lot of poisonous snakes. You have to wear a hat and cover yourself.
Q: What are some of your memories of working at Duane Morris?
A: Henry Reath and [former partner] Mike Baylson had me work with them on Columbia Metal Culvert Co. v. Kaiser Aluminum & Chem. Corp. (renamed Bonjorno v. Kaiser, et al.), a major antitrust case. I learned a lot on that case and from those lawyers. I had great mentors at the firm and relationships that have lasted all these years.
