Business Law

General Counsel

Hemenway & Barnes provides comprehensive general counsel services to privately held companies, family businesses and nonprofits in a wide variety of industries, including real estate, technology, healthcare, manufacturing, and financial and professional services.

By maintaining personal partner-level relationships with our clients, we are able to provide practical, timely advice on a day-to-day basis and during transactions and transitions. Our experience ranges from contract negotiations to corporate governance, including:

• Company formation and choice of entity
• Compensation and equity participation
• Commercial transactions and licensing agreements
• Debt and equity financing
• IP licensing
• Mergers and acquisitions
• Oversight of outside specialty counsel
• Partnerships, joint ventures and strategic alliances
• Real estate leasing, acquisitions and dispositions
• Strategic growth planning
• Succession planning
• Tax planning and disputes

Representative Experience

• A charitable organization initially came to Hemenway & Barnes for help with its nonprofit work. As their needs evolved, so did our role. Serving as general counsel for more than a decade now, we help the organization navigate their nonprofit, corporate, tax and real estate matters.
• After our successful representation of a private equity firm in the acquisition of a distressed regional consumer product/home delivery business, the operating company retained Hemenway & Barnes to serve as outside general counsel.
• Serving as general counsel to an SEC-registered investment advisor with over $2 billion in assets under management, Hemenway & Barnes created and maintains compliance policies and procedures and organizes and maintains the company’s pooled investment vehicles, including drafting private placement memorandums, governing documents and securities law compliance policies.
• A healthcare technology company that developed software and web-based systems to streamline the healthcare payment process hired Hemenway & Barnes to serve as general counsel, including assisting in the formation of the company and representing it through three rounds of venture capital-led financing.
• Hemenway & Barnes serves as general counsel for a health maintenance organization in Massachusetts, handling matters that include negotiations of technology and clinical information systems agreements.