Procopio Gives Startups a Desk Down the Hall From Their Lawyers

A founder developing cybersecurity technology and a team working on cell therapy have an unusual address in common: their law firm’s office. Eclipse 13 Labs and Prismatic Bio are the announced 2026 participants in Procopio’s LaunchPad incubator in Del Mar Heights. The arrangement puts entrepreneurs close to people who can help organize a company, protect an invention and prepare for fundraising. For a business whose valuable assets may still be ideas, those are consequential neighbors.

Procopio, Cory, Hargreaves & Savitch LLP sells legal advice and representation. Its work runs from corporate transactions and intellectual property to disputes, employment, tax and real estate. Yet the incubator offers a more revealing introduction than a directory of practices. It shows a firm willing to meet some clients while their companies are still being assembled, when an unanswered ownership question can be as pressing as the next product milestone.

There is an appealing lack of glamour to that proposition. Startup storytelling loves the pitch, the prototype and the triumphant funding announcement. Someone still has to decide what the company owns and document how it can do business with other people. Procopio has made that less photogenic work part of its invitation to founders.

02Nine months, with counsel nearby

LaunchPad began in 2012. The program typically runs for nine months, with timing that can vary by participant. Its 2026 cohort spans cryptographic and advanced computing work at Eclipse 13 Labs and a cell-therapy platform at Prismatic Bio. Those are different scientific problems, but both teams need to connect technical development with a business that can attract capital.

Participants receive selected corporate and intellectual-property legal services at no charge, plus workspace and administrative support. That scope matters: selected services are a concrete benefit, not a promise that every future legal bill disappears. The application requires a pitch deck or executive summary, and places are limited. The model is built around choosing companies for which the relationship makes sense.

For an applicant, the practical cost conversation begins with boundaries. Which matters are included? Who handles work outside that scope? What happens when the incubation period ends? A founder comparing programs should put those questions beside the mentoring calendar. A complimentary service has more value when both sides agree on precisely what it covers.

Procopio Business Advisors, the firm’s wholly owned subsidiary, houses the program. Led by former Deloitte San Diego managing partner Kenneth Weixel, it also offers non-legal help with finance, governance, risk assessment and transactions. That places the incubator within a broader effort to advise on the operation of a business, beyond its documents.

03The interruption was physical

The office arrangement had a vulnerability. COVID-19 interrupted LaunchPad for two years; Procopio announced its reopening in June 2022. A program that makes proximity part of its value had to contend with the loss of ordinary office life. The interruption is a useful correction to any suggestion that the incubator has operated without a break since its founding.

The reopening retained its emphasis on working alongside attorneys and drawing on outside business experience. The advisory roster announced then included life-sciences entrepreneur Magda Marquet and Tech Coast Angels LA co-founder John Morris. The choice was to resume the model with access to experienced people at its center. There is no need to invent a dramatic conversion speech to make that decision interesting.

For other professional-services firms, the copyable move is straightforward: give promising clients access to expertise early, and make that access easy to use. The demanding part is paying for it in staff time and attention. An office full of specialists helps only when the participating businesses need those specialties and the professionals have room to engage.

04The patent portfolio has a sense of humor

Consider Cassidy Matwiyoff’s Bow Wow. Procopio reported in June 2024 that the young inventor had secured a U.S. patent for an automatic dog back scratcher with help from intellectual-property partner Steve Beuerle. The device attracts its customer with a treat and uses sensors and a robotic arm to do the petting. Its intended customer, to be clear, has paws.

The patent, US 11,991,983 B2, makes the firm’s intellectual-property work unusually easy to picture. An invention becomes a defined technical claim that an attorney helps pursue through the patent system. A granted patent and a successful consumer business remain different accomplishments; Procopio’s announcement described Matwiyoff’s ambitions to bring the device to market and seek investors.

The more conventional client list is just as revealing. Three clients selected for Connect’s 2025 Cool Companies class were Coastar Therapeutics, which develops drug-delivery technology; DeepWater Exploration, which makes underwater imaging technology; and FreMon Scientific, which developed the ZipThaw plasma-thawing system. Procopio identified a corporate lawyer supporting each company. These are tangible businesses with distinct products, rather than an undifferentiated collection of startup logos.

For such companies, the legal job can continue well beyond patent filing. Procopio’s technology-transactions practice covers licensing, research collaborations, manufacturing, supply, distribution and data rights. Each relationship asks a different commercial question: who may use the technology, for what purpose, and on what terms? The firm’s breadth gives clients several kinds of counsel to call as those questions multiply.

“Procopio’s IP expertise and strategic guidance are exactly what we need as we move from proof of concept to real-world deployment.”

Alexander Burwell · Founder and CEO, Eclipse 13 Labs

05From two cubicles to a complicated partnership

The origin story starts in 1946 with Alec Cory and Edward Schwartz, following Cory’s Navy service in World War II. Their first San Diego office occupied 300 square feet, divided into two cubicles. A merger with Price & Nottbusch followed in 1947. The present four-name identity was established in 1967, after the partnership had evolved beyond its original pair.

Growth did not spare the firm the politics of ownership. A 2017 San Diego Lawyer retrospective described financial and cultural tension between older partners and younger lawyers roughly a quarter-century earlier, when the firm had about 40 attorneys. Then-managing partner Tom Turner credited the firm with working through that divide. He also pointed to hiring a non-lawyer chief operating officer as a consequential management decision.

That is a more useful account of institutional development than a smooth ascending line. A partnership has to accommodate people at different career stages, with different expectations about rewards and control. Procopio’s reported experience offers an example of addressing that friction and introducing professional management. It does not establish a universal formula for keeping partners together.

Today the firm describes a bench of nearly 200 attorneys. Its office directory lists seven offices across California, Arizona, Nevada and Washington, D.C., including two in San Diego. Affiliations with Meritas and LEI extend access to other law firms internationally. That combination places Procopio in an interesting part of the market: a substantial regional base, a national footprint and relationships beyond its own offices.

06The waterfront belongs in this story, too

A startup-focused introduction can obscure how much of Procopio’s business concerns established assets and institutions. Its practice leadership includes construction, education, Native American law, public agencies, trusts and estates, and tax controversy. A developer, school organization or family managing wealth may have little reason to care about LaunchPad. The broader firm gives them different reasons to call.

An August 2026 hire illustrates that range. Real-estate attorney David Jones returned as a partner after more than six years as deputy general counsel to the San Diego Unified Port District. His public-sector work included waterfront projects such as the Chula Vista Bayfront and Seaport Village. He returned with experience on the client side of large property decisions.

For developers, investors, landlords and public agencies, that experience is relevant to the work itself: negotiating leases, arranging financing and coordinating development transactions. Procopio combines real-estate advice with land-use, environmental, tax and litigation capabilities. A project can require several of those at once, making coordination among practices part of what a client is buying.

The business model is a professional-services partnership earning fees for legal engagements, with consulting available through its subsidiary. Its competitive case rests on practice coverage, industry familiarity and relationships. Alternatives include a specialist boutique for a narrow matter, a regional full-service firm or a larger national or international firm. The sensible comparison is the proposed team and assignment, rather than the length of the firm name.

07The work that does not arrive with a pitch deck

Procopio’s community commitments reach beyond commercially promising founders. It lists pro bono work involving organizations including Casa Cornelia Law Center, the California Innocence Project and California Lawyers for the Arts. The latter describes the firm’s participation in the California Inventors Assistance Program since 2018, helping eligible inventors obtain representation that would otherwise be difficult to afford.

Internally, the firm describes mentoring, bias training, scholarships and internships among its diversity efforts. Those are more specific signals of its stated culture than an assertion that everyone is collegial. They concern who gets a first opportunity, who receives support afterward and how a professional institution develops its next generation.

Recognition supplies another signal, with limits. In August 2026, Procopio announced that 73 attorneys had been named to the 2027 Best Lawyers and Ones to Watch lists. Three received Lawyer of the Year designations, in appellate, bankruptcy-litigation and Native American law. The spread reinforces the firm’s range. Peer recognition can help a prospective client build a shortlist; the actual fit still depends on the matter and the people assigned to it.

08Borrow the access, ask about the assignment

The most useful lesson from Procopio is to bring business and legal questions into the same conversation early. Its emerging-company practice connects formation and financing with intellectual-property ownership, employment and commercial agreements. For a founder, the habit to copy is identifying those connected decisions before a transaction forces everyone to examine them at speed.

LaunchPad makes particular sense for a selected technology or life-sciences company that can use sustained access to those skills. A business seeking only a simple, isolated document may need a much smaller engagement. A company facing a specialized dispute should evaluate the relevant litigation team. An incubator cannot supply customer demand, and professional advice cannot turn an unworkable product into a market.

For Procopio, the desk down the hall is an unusually clear expression of its proposition. A client is trying to build something; the lawyers can help put the necessary rights, relationships and agreements around it. Sometimes that something is a cell-therapy company. Sometimes it is a waterfront development. And, on a particularly good day for dogs, it is an automatic back scratcher.