Paul is a seasoned corporate, transactional and securities attorney with more than thirty years of experience. His areas of specialty include venture capital and emerging high-technology companies. He has served as counsel to both companies and investors, providing highly effective, pragmatic counseling on a wide variety of structural and transactional issues. Paul has represented clients in areas including venture capital and private equity transactions; corporate partnerships and strategic alliances; technology licensing and transfers; corporate restructurings; private placements and public offerings of both equity and debt securities and mergers and acquisitions.
Paul’s clients include financial institutions, private placement syndicators, venture capital firms and emerging companies and entrepreneurs in a wide variety of industries such as information technology, wireless telephony, digital media, cable television and biotechnology. His significant experience enables him to assist entrepreneurs with key issues such as capital structure and fund raising, incentive compensation for key employees, attracting effective directors and advisors, maximizing the value of key assets (especially intellectual property assets) and potential exit strategies. Here, Paul focuses on assisting the entrepreneur to avoid common missteps that might compromise the ability to attract funding and talent or achieve a successful exit.
Paul began his professional career with Kelley Drye & Warren (New York), where he specialized in securities law, mergers and acquisitions, banking and international finance. In addition, he spent two years in the firm’s Tokyo office, representing a variety of financial institutions engaged in international financial transactions, including public and private securities offerings and cross-border, multi-currency financings.
Thereafter, he transitioned to telecommunications law firm Fleischman and Walsh, P.C. (Washington, D.C.), where he spearheaded the creation of a corporate department. Paul managed a wide variety of transactional work for the firm’s clients, including private and public securities offerings, mergers and acquisitions involving media properties and strategic alliances.
After several years in Washington, Paul took a leave from the practice of law to work for a major private placement investment syndicator in Los Angeles, where he was responsible for negotiating and structuring the firm’s investment transactions. Thereafter, he and his then-partners founded and managed a series of venture capital micro-funds specializing in early stage investments in high technology companies. It is this substantial business background, in addition to his legal experience, that enables Paul to offer practical and workable solutions to clients and think “outside the box.”
- B.A., Yale University, 1973 [magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa]
- J.D., University of Pennsylvania School of Law, Philadelphia, PA 1976