Michael Woronoff teaches Venture Capital and the Start-Up Company. He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees from Purdue University (1982), and his J.D., cum laude, from the University of Michigan (1985), where he was Notes Editor of the Journal of Law Reform and the recipient of the Emmett E. Eagan award.

Mr. Woronoff is a Partner at Kirkland & Ellis LLP. Prior to joining Kirkland, he was a partner at Proskauer Rose, LLP, and head of the firm's Los Angeles office. Prior to joining Proskauer, he co-founded, and was a principal of, Shelter Capital Partners, a Southern California based private equity fund.

Mr. Woronoff serves on the Board of Directors of Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc. (NYSE: ARE), an urban office REIT uniquely focused on collaborative life science and technology campuses, which was recognized by Silicon Valley Bank as the most active biopharma investor by new deal volume in 2017–2018, and ranked by Forbes as the #1 venture capital investor in the healthcare sector by U.S.-based 2018 deal volume. He has also served on the Board of Directors of several start-up and emerging companies, including AccessDNA, Inc., TransDimension, Inc. and u-Nav Microelectronics, Inc.

Mr. Woronoff is a frequent author and lecturer on a variety of corporate and securities law topics. Among other things, he has authored or co-authored: “Random Thoughts on Private Equity Practice,” in Deal Strategies for Venture Capital and Private Equity Lawyers; “Effective vs. Nominal Valuations in Venture Capital Investing,” 2 NYU Journal of Law & Business 199 (2005); “Understanding Anti-dilution Provisions in Convertible Securities,” 74 Fordham Law Review 129 (2005); and “Confidentiality,” in Negotiating and Drafting Contract Boilerplate.

He also writes frequently on teaching transactional law. His articles include “What Law Schools Should Teach Future Transactional Lawyers,” UCLA School of Law, Law-Econ Research Paper No. 09-17 (available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1430087), “Teaching Numeracy,” Tennessee Journal of Business Law (available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1833882), and “Using a Venture Capital Class to Teach Transactional Skills,” Tennessee Journal of Business Law (available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1292477).

Mr. Woronoff has been nationally recognized by leading legal and business publications as one of the top corporate lawyers in the nation. He was the exclusive winner of Lexology’s Client Choice Award in the category of Mergers & Acquisitions (California), in both 2019 and 2018. He was named one of Los Angeles’ “Most Influential Private Equity Advisors” by the Los Angeles Business Journal in 2019; and for the sixth time, one of the “Top 100 Lawyers in California” by the Daily Journal in 2018. In 2016, he was named the "Lawyer of the Year” for Corporate Law in Los Angeles by The Best Lawyers in America, which recognizes only a single lawyer in that category.