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Ranked by Chambers USA every year since 2020 for Corporate/M&A in New Jersey, Nicholas San Filippo has nearly 30 years of experience advising entrepreneurs, founder-owners, and C-suite executives on mergers and acquisitions, business divorce, shareholder oppression, and outside general counsel matters.
Nick has guided hundreds of closely held and middle-market companies and family offices through high-stakes transactions and ownership disputes in industries ranging from chemicals and manufacturing to food, distribution, and professional services across New Jersey and New York. His perspective is sharpened by 16 years as an active participant in a Vistage CEO peer group and six years in Tiger 21, working alongside more than 50 entrepreneur owners, exited founders, and C-level executives as they confront the decisions that actually define a business. That depth of exposure, combined with sustained personal coaching from a top Vistage chair, gives Nick a vantage point rare among M&A attorneys: he doesn't just advise business owners—he thinks like one.
Equally comfortable guiding the experienced C-suite of a large international company or a private equity firm as he is counseling an entrepreneur owner or family office manager, Nick frequently leads one-of-a-kind mergers and acquisitions. However, his practice extends well beyond the transaction. For many clients, Nick serves as a standing advisor to clients rather than a deal-by-deal lawyer: the person business owners call between transactions to work through growth strategy, succession planning, and eventual exit. That role is reinforced by his own continuing immersion in the New York and New Jersey business communities via monthly CEO roundtables, service on client advisory boards, and ongoing dialogue with the entrepreneurs and executives he counsels one-on-one.
Clients typically come to Nick at an inflection point: they might be a founder or family owner preparing to sell or recapitalize a closely held or middle-market company; co-owners whose relationship has broken down and who need a business divorce or shareholder dispute resolved; or a business owner who needs a trusted outside general counsel to navigate growth, governance, and eventual exit. That range of experience gives Nick an instinct for a client’s likely challenges and the realistic paths through them.
Having practiced at Lowenstein Sandler for nearly 30 years, Nick knows how to pull together the right team across disciplines at the right moment, collaborating closely with colleagues to take a 360° view and balance the correct legal answer with the realities of business risk, deadlines, and budget. Recent representative work includes guiding the third-generation owner-operators of one of the largest manufacturers of food products to the QSR industry through a buy-out of the second-generation and remaining third-generation owners, , and representing top accounting firm Sax LLP in its strategic growth initiative involving six acquisitions in nine months.
In addition to his transactional and outside legal/business counseling work, Nick co-leads the firm’s Business Divorce Group, which guides clients through the complexities of co-owner disputes and, when necessary, business separation and shareholder oppression litigation. A skilled negotiator, he applies the same strategic instincts to navigate contentious matters between minority and majority shareholders of closely held companies or members of family businesses, working to preserve enterprise value and reach a satisfactory resolution.
Nick has served on the firm’s Executive Board for more than a decade, co-chaired two firmwide strategic plans, and sat on multiple equity partner committees, including the Equity Partner Compensation Committee. That institutional knowledge, paired with his standing in the entrepreneur and executive community, makes him equally at home in the boardroom or across the negotiating table — and just as valuable to a client working through a problem that hasn’t reached either one yet.
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