Law firm Bingham McCutchen said Tuesday that Daniel Cooperman, the former general counsel at Apple and Oracle, will rejoin its Silicon Valley office and focus on “corporate and transactional matters.”

One of things that Mr. Cooperman says he intends to do: bring the firm up to speed.

In a phone interview, the 59-year-old attorney, who spent almost 11 years at Oracle and was at Apple between 2007 and 2009, provided a glimpse into the pressures of being a general counsel at major corporations. He said law firms in general don’t fully understand the speed, urgency and virtual nature of corporations’ operations.

“They move from one matter to the next in alarming, breathtaking speed. You don’t have a great deal of mindshare,” said Mr. Cooperman, adding that part of his role would be to help his firm better understand its clients–even if it’s something as small as learning not to be offended when clients hang up the phone abruptly.

“It’s really just crazy,” said Mr. Cooperman “Until you’ve been inside the corporation and you’ve experienced it yourself, it’s hard to explain.”

Perhaps in an indication of the pressures of Apple’s extra frenetic pace, Mr. Cooperman is the second of three general counsels that Apple has had since longtime counsel Nancy Heinen left the company in 2006. The role is currently being filled by Bruce Sewell, the former general counsel of Intel.

At the time of Mr. Cooperman’s departure from Apple, the company said in a release that he was retiring. In the Tuesday interview with this blog, Mr. Cooperman admitted that he needed a break from the intensity of the general counsel job, which he has held for a total of 13 years.

“It’s an extreme amount of responsibility and accountability and you need to be available fully 24 hours a day. After all that time, I really wanted a bit of sabbatical,” he said.

At Bingham, Mr. Cooperman said he will likely represent both small private companies as well as multinational corporations in M&A deals. He said his experience as both an executive and general counsel for multinational companies will help the law firm better anticipate its clients needs.

For Mr. Cooperman, it is a bit of a homecoming. Prior to his position at Oracle, he was a managing partner of the San Jose office for McCutchen Doyle Brown & Enersen, which merged with Bingham Dana in 2002 to create the present firm.

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