After 12 years at a tech-focused venture capital fund in the Valley, James Strawbridge is returning to Big Law.

Strawbridge, who was general partner and chief operating officer at Worldview Technology Partners since 2001, joined Cooley’s Palo Alto office as a partner in the business and finance practice group on Monday. Earlier in his career, as a partner at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, he helped put together transactions for clients such as Netscape Communications Corp., Pixar Animation Studios Inc., NetGravity Inc., Xilinx Inc. and NeXT Software Inc.