As a corporate lawyer who has worked in New York City for more than seven years, clients and coworkers often ask me for suggestions on the best corporate lawyers in the area. Some of the best corporate lawyers in the world work in New York City. These lawyers have worked for big banks, Fortune 500 companies, startups, and more. Read Top Corporate Lawyers in NYC: 2024 Guide below.
I’ll share my 2024 guide to the best corporate lawyers working in New York City in this blog post. It’s based on my many years of working with and watching many of these lawyers. I judged these lawyers on things like their subject matter expertise, experience with big deals, clientele, reputation among their peers, and professional accomplishments.
John Davis – Expert in M&A and Capital Markets
This is John Davis. He is a partner in the corporate group at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, which is one of the best law firms for businesses. John has been a lawyer for big banks and corporations for more than 25 years. He has a lot of experience helping businesses with mergers and acquisitions. Initial public offerings (IPOs), stock and debt offerings, spin-offs, joint ventures, and other complicated deals.
He has won many awards in his field, including being named Dealmaker of the Year by The American Lawyer. John has a long list of important clients that includes leaders in the manufacturing, healthcare, technology, and financial services industries. When billion-dollar deals are at stake, New York CEOs turn to John as one of the best corporate deal lawyers.
Mary Chen – Leading Startup/VC Attorney Mary
Mary Chen is a partner at Cooley LLP and works in corporate and securities law. She is also co-chair of the firm’s top startup and venture capital practice. She helps entrepreneurs, new businesses grow, and investors with a lot of different business and money matters, from setting up new businesses and signing founder agreements to later-stage private financings and initial public offerings (IPOs).
Mary has spent more than 20 years working with startups and has worked with some of the most successful companies in New York. She gives great strategic advice on how to set up a business, how to get licenses, how to get private financing and more. She is likely the best startup lawyer in New York because of her great reputation and high level of experience representing early-stage companies.
Gary Schwartz – Private Equity Wizard
Law360 has named Gary Schwartz one of the five “Private Equity MVPs” in the country and one of the best private equity lawyers in New York. Big private equity firms like The Blackstone Group, Apollo Global Management, Silver Lake Partners, and others have hired him. They hired him to help them with complicated deals like take-privates, minority investments, distressed debt acquisitions, fund formations, and more. These deals have been worth billions of dollars.
Gary is the head of the corporate department and co-head of the private equity group at Kirkland & Ellis LLP. He has more than 30 years of experience in private equity. He has been a part of some of the biggest and most well-known private equity deals in the past few years. As one of the top experts in New York City on private equity investments and how to carry out deals, Gary is the person to talk to.
Cynthia Thomas – Public Company Governance
Cynthia Thomas is a partner at Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP. As a partner, her main job is to help public companies with things like SEC compliance, stock exchange listing standards, and other board-related issues. Recently, scandals at companies like FTX have made governance and compliance skills more important than ever for public companies.
Cynthia has done a lot of work with the boards of many large public companies. Giving them advice on things like executive pay, risk management, best practices for governance, and sensitive internal controls and procedures. She really knows a lot about how to run a public company. Follow the rules, and do business with related parties.
Julia Park: A Rising Star in Tech Deals
Julia Park is a partner in mergers and acquisitions at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP. She is quickly becoming a star in New York’s tech industry corporate legal circles. Julia is only 39 years old, but she has already been the lead lawyer in more than $50 billion worth of mergers and acquisitions involving global technology companies.
Microsoft, IBM, Dell, SAP, Adobe, and other big names in the field are among her clients. Julia seems to have been involved in many of the biggest deals in enterprise software, fintech, and cloud services in the past few years. She has a lot of strategic knowledge that is way beyond her years. When negotiating mission-critical tech M&A deals, Fortune 500 CEOs and boards of directors often turn to her for help.
NYC’s Corporate Legal Community
This list gives you a quick look at some of the best corporate lawyers working in New York City right now. Plus, these lawyers aren’t the only top corporate lawyers in New York City. There are many more. The world’s biggest banks, Fortune 500 companies, and fast-growing companies hire lawyers in New York City. They handle their M&A deals, private equity deals, initial public offerings (IPOs), governance issues, and other complicated business work.
A big advantage for big companies with headquarters in the New York area is that there are a lot of top-notch corporate lawyers in the city. It’s very helpful to be able to easily get in touch with top experts in areas like mergers and acquisitions, private equity, capital markets, venture capital, executive compensation, governance, and more.
Conclusion
Management teams will need to find lawyers with proven knowledge in new areas like ESG, shareholder activism, SPAC transactions, blockchain technologies, global tax efficiencies, and more in order to reach their strategic goals. Laws and rules are changing quickly. That being said, I hope this guide helps you find some of the best corporate lawyers working in New York City right now. Please let me know if you need anything else!
Aseem Sahni is a distinguished first-generation corporate lawyer at CorporateLawyers.in, specializing in Corporate and Commercial law. His expertise spans Mergers & Acquisitions, media and entertainment, private equity, and securities laws. Aseem provides strategic guidance on corporate advisory, drafting and negotiating key agreements, and legal due diligence across various sectors, including healthcare, manufacturing, and technology.
With experience from leading national and international law firms, Aseem advises Indian listed companies on securities laws and corporate governance. He actively publishes articles and research papers on legal and societal issues. Connect with Aseem on LinkedIn.