There are lots of ways to measure which communities are the hottest up-and-coming challengers to the dominance of Silicon Valley. You can rank them by the amount of venture capital flowing to an area; you can list them according to which add the most high-tech jobs — or you can look to see where the technology lawyers are flocking.
Northern Virginia is the clear leader by the latter. In interviews with lawyers from more than a dozen leading high-tech firms, the Tysons Corner/Reston area of Virginia most often was cited as the place to be. A close second is New York’s Silicon Alley, which has become a magnet for firms with established technology practices in Silicon Valley, Boston and Texas. Other emerging tech regions attracting lawyers include: the Southeast, led by Atlanta and Research Triangle, N.C.; Dallas and Austin, Texas; Denver and Boulder, Colo.; and Los Angeles and San Diego. Increasingly, firms are following clients overseas as well, to capture high-tech work in Europe, Latin America and beyond.
