An ongoing pandemic, a volatile economy, booming capital, private investment funds and M&A markets, and the early emergence of crypto and NFTs as institutional asset classes all presented unprecedented opportunities and novel challenges in 2021. These forces actually accelerated the convergence of the economic sectors where Lowenstein Sandler has its greatest strengths as a law firm: the representation of investment funds, technology companies, and businesses in the life sciences sector. Listen to the full episode to hear how Lowenstein achieved a record year of growth despite these tumultuous times by maintaining the principles of professional excellence, community service, and inclusivity on which the firm was founded.
Speakers:
Gary M. Wingens, Chair and Managing Partner, Lowenstein Sandler
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READ THE TRANSCRIPT
Gary Wingens: An ongoing pandemic, a volatile economy, booming capital, private investment funds and M&A markets, and the early emergence of crypto and NFTs as institutional asset classes all presented unprecedented opportunities and novel challenges for our clients in 2021. For Lowenstein, these forces continued to accelerate the convergence of the economic sectors where we have our greatest strengths and depth as a law firm: the representation of investment funds—whether venture, hedge or private equity, and increasingly family offices—technology companies, and businesses in the life sciences sector.
As a firm, we thrived in this environment by relying on our core values of our commitment to our colleagues, our clients, and our communities. We are grateful that these values, combined with the trust that our clients placed in us, allowed us to achieve yet another record year of growth. We are proud that through this tumultuous time, we continued to maintain the principles of professional excellence, community service, and inclusivity on which our firm was founded.
In 2021, we doubled down on our commitment to New York City and our flagship offices in the heart of Midtown by committing to the expansion and complete renovation of our offices to create a destination for a post-pandemic hybrid world. We also completed the relocation and expansion of our Utah offices. Our goal in all of our offices is to create environments where people want to collaborate in the office, yet have the flexibility and ready access to the technology that allows them to work wherever is most productive for them on a hybrid basis, with uninterrupted delivery of fantastic service to our clients.
We added seven new partners in 2021. Boris Lieberman joined us in the New York Investment Management practice at the beginning of the year from a large investment management fund. Boris focuses his practice on designing and implementing counterparty and risk management strategies for some of the most sophisticated investment funds in the world. Mike Vito returned to the firm as a Trusts & Estates partner in our Washington, D.C. office. Rachel Ingwer and Ed Cohen joined us early in the year to expand our Tax practice and dramatically increase our ability to serve funds and family offices with sophisticated domestic and cross-border tax planning needs. While tax planning has always been one of our core strengths, I am proud that we now have the strongest Tax practice in firm history.
Rob Johnston joined our White Collar and Fund Compliance teams from Sculptor Capital. Rob has enormous experience representing investment funds in FCPA, AML, and SEC compliance situations. Jordana Renert is now a New York-based partner in our Bankruptcy & Restructuring Department, focusing her practice on advising creditors in insolvency proceedings. Jared Kelly became a partner in our Capital Markets & Securities group in New York, and Ted Randolph returned to Lowenstein as a partner in the Investment Management group, also based out of our New York office.
And we ended the year by promoting seven new partners from within our associate and counsel ranks, and announcing the addition of Chris Gerold as a partner in our Securities Litigation & Compliance group, where he joined us from his role as Chief of the New Jersey Bureau of Securities, and a former President of the North American Securities Administrators Association. In those roles, Chris was one of the nation's leading regulators in the crypto and decentralized finance space. We expect that he's going to be extremely helpful to our rapidly growing roster of clients that are becoming household names in the infrastructure of the crypto, DeFi, and NFT economy.
It was great to land Chris from his government role, as 2021 also saw the departure of our partner, Bruce Buechler, who became a judge, and our colleague Anne Milgram, who was appointed by President Biden as Administrator of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. And earlier this month, our colleague Rob Menendez, who has spent his entire career with our Investment Management practice, announced he was launching his campaign to become a Congressman. We wish all of our colleagues who choose to enter public service great success.
We're extremely proud of the work we did for our clients last year. In the Fund Formation space, we once again formed a record number of venture capital, hedge, and other alternative funds, as well as a good number of new family offices. We were privileged to be called upon throughout the year to help our fund and strategic clients deploy their assets.
Our Private Equity and M&A practices were extremely active with both buy-side and sell-side deals in the hundreds of millions to billions of dollars. Our Venture and Life Sciences practices represented funds and emerging growth companies in hundreds of investment transactions with an unprecedented number and size of later-stage rounds. Our Capital Markets group also saw a spike in activity in public offerings and financings, particularly in the life sciences sector.
As courts reopened, our Litigation department triumphed in numerous venues, including in the successful defense of the Capitol police officer who was defending Congress during the events of January 6th. And, at the request of the Governor of New Jersey, we conducted an extremely sensitive and high-profile investigation into allegations of abuse of inmates at the state's largest prison for women, resulting in a widely praised report and ultimately the permanent closure of that facility.
Our Insurance Recovery Group remained at the forefront of representing policyholders in the D&O liability claim space, as well as emerging claims under representation and warranty insurance, and novel business interruption issues generated by the pandemic. Our Bankruptcy & Restructuring team continued to help many clients through the insolvency process, including the representation of over 300 victims of sexual abuse in the bankruptcy proceeding of a large Diocese.
Finally, many of our practices changed the mode of delivering timely information to our clients and friends about the latest developments by launching new podcast and video series. You can find them on our website, or by searching “Lowenstein Sandler” wherever you get your podcasts.
Notwithstanding juggling an enormous amount of client work, and the challenges of the pandemic, our lawyers devoted a substantial amount of time to our pro bono efforts in 2021. Under the auspices of the Lowenstein Center for the Public Interest, we continued to advocate for the rights of thousands of tenants facing evictions, to secure asylum for immigrants, and for reform of sentencing guidelines for juvenile offenders.
We have come so far since this time last year. The challenges we have all faced inspired new ways to problem solve issues ranging from health to diversity, to how to integrate DeFi into the global economy. I am so proud of the stamina shown by our colleagues, clients, and communities in overcoming these challenges, becoming stronger, more resilient, and more deeply appreciative of what we have and what we can give.
Thank you for watching. Onward and upward to a stronger and better 2022.
