Rick’s practice is dedicated to providing complex, “bet-the-company” transactional and corporate governance advice to boards and executives. While he continues to serve as outside general counsel to a small number of clients, he primarily serves as an independent director to closely held businesses. With almost three decades of experience representing hundreds of founders, angels, and institutional investors, he understands the incentives and goals of all the primary stakeholders in growing companies.

Rick has experience in a range of corporate transactions (M&A, investments, and debt and equity transactions) and in structuring new businesses for start-up founders positioning themselves to raise capital; from assisting nonprofits organizations undergoing strategic reviews to advising organizers of new nonprofit entities how to obtain federal and state exemptions.

Rick draws on his experience serving on corporate and nonprofit boards, creating financial models and fundraising presentations for start-ups, and analyzing strategic problems in transactions and litigation to frame issues properly for better-informed corporate decisions. For expanding companies, he shares his years of merger and acquisition advisory work for clients, including deal prospecting, due diligence, negotiation, financial modeling, deal execution, and post-merger integration. Finally, his experience is not limited to one field; his clients come from many industries: health care, SaaS, ecommerce, clothing retailers and fashion designers, consumer foodstuffs, real estate, financial services, computer hardware, IT consulting, strategy consulting, construction materials, import/export, enterprise software, and contract manufacturing.

As the parent of a child with autism, Rick’s pro bono work educates parents entering the special education process with their local school district. Rick explains IDEA’s procedural requirements and the FAPE standard, and he provides advice about advocacy and negotiation strategy. Rick often provides referrals to subject-matter experts who can perform appropriate independent evaluations and to lawyers and advocates who regularly represent children and families.

Rick has a wide array of legal experience on which to build: he practiced in both New York City and in Silicon Valley at large national law firms. He has been involved in hundreds of negotiations across a wide variety of scenarios. In New York City, Rick practiced at Holland & Knight LLP, litigating mass torts involving pesticides, asbestos, and the crash of TWA Flight 800. He then practiced corporate and securities law at Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison LLP, in the Palo Alto, CA, office, where his practice included venture financing and mergers and acquisitions for start-ups, venture capital funds, E*Trade, and Cisco Systems.

Rick is a graduate of the Cornell Law School. Before law school, Rick was an Infantry officer in the U.S. Army stationed in Hawaii and Georgia. He is a graduate of the Officer Candidate, Airborne, and Ranger Schools. He has a BA in English from Allegheny College where he served on the Alumni Council for six years.

He has been admitted to practice in New York, California, and New Jersey, as well as in the United States District Courts for the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York, the Northern District of California, and the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

• Startups, SMBs & Emerging Growth Companies

• Corporate & Outside General Counsel

• Contracts, Deals & Transactions

• Mergers, Acquisitions & Exits

• Technology, Venture Capital & Private Equity