Jason Williams

Jason Williams is a corporate transactional attorney with more than 15 years of experience advising on complex business transactions, entity structuring, and corporate governance. As a Consulting Attorney and member of the firm’s drafting team in the New York office, Mr. Williams brings his extensive background in structuring and documenting sophisticated business arrangements to the firm’s law firm formation, structuring, and planning practice.

As a member of the firm’s drafting team, Mr. Williams draws on more than 15 years of experience structuring and negotiating complex transactions and documenting governance arrangements for institutional clients. He applies that experience to the firm’s law firm drafting and development projects, working with the team to plan, develop, and draft law firm governance documents, including:

• Limited Liability Partnership agreements
• Professional Corporation articles of incorporation, bylaws, and shareholder agreements
• PLLC operating agreements and governance documents
• Law firm registration documents for state and licensing authorities
• Partner and shareholder compensation systems, promotion frameworks, and retirement plans
• Succession planning and growth planning documentation.

Mr. Williams also assists in the firm’s work counseling law firms on partner departures, lateral acquisitions, mergers, dissolutions, and other structural transitions.

EXTENSIVE CORPORATE AND TRANSACTIONAL EXPERIENCE

Before joining O’Rielly & Roche, Mr. Williams developed broad experience in corporate and securities law across some of the nation’s most prominent law firms and institutions. He began his career as a Corporate Associate at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, where he advised public and private companies, boards of directors, and private equity sponsors on mergers and acquisitions, divestitures, joint ventures, complex financing transactions, corporate governance, and securities matters.

Mr. Williams subsequently served as Senior Counsel in the Office of the Chief Counsel, Division of Investment Management, at the United States Securities & Exchange Commission, where he drafted rules, interpretive guidance, and policy analysis relating to the regulation of investment advisors and investment companies, and coordinated with federal regulators on derivatives oversight. He later served as Associate General Counsel at Viking Global Investors, where he was primary internal counsel for all private equity and venture capital investments and global trading activity.

Mr. Williams trained at several of New York’s largest firms, where he advised alternative investment managers on complex strategic transactions — including minority and controlling investments, secondary transactions, joint ventures, management company equity structuring, inter-member governance, and succession planning.

Mr. Williams also served as General Counsel of Titan Solar Power, a renewable energy company with a 26-state footprint, where he was chief legal advisor to the executive leadership team and managed a department of 15 legal and compliance professionals.

PRACTICAL PERSPECTIVE

Mr. Williams’s career has given him a practical perspective on the kinds of challenges that law firm owners and managers face in structuring, governing, and planning their firms. He has negotiated and documented operating agreements, shareholder arrangements, equity structures, compensation systems, and governance frameworks across a wide range of entity types and industries. He has advised on partner admissions, departures, and succession planning in the context of professional services and investment management firms. And he has served as a general counsel, giving him firsthand experience with the operational realities of managing a legal function. He brings all of that experience to his work for the firm’s law firm clients.

Our Drafting Team

Our drafting team draws on the firm’s extensive experience developing and filing law firm governance documents and registration documents. The large volume of drafting projects we do for law firms each year, and the large volume of partnership disputes we handle, give us a unique perspective on what works and what doesn’t. While each firm is different, this broad-ranging practical experience allows us to customize our recommendations for each client’s particular situation and objectives.

Our tailored drafting and development process—designed to capture the client’s governance intent; advise on implementation of best practices; and document agreements in clear, concise, and understandable language—guides our law firm clients through what could otherwise be the daunting task of planning and developing the right agreement for their firm’s present and future.