King & Spalding Promotes 28 New Partners and 14 Counsel Across 14 Cities

NEW YORK, Dec 6, 2023- King & Spalding announced today that it has named 28 new partners and 14 counsel. The promotions span 14 cities (Atlanta, Austin, Charlotte, Chicago, Denver, Houston, London, Los Angeles, New York, Northern Virginia, Paris, Sacramento, Silicon Valley, and Washington, D.C.).

“Our newly promoted partners and counsel reflect King & Spalding’s commitment to providing excellent service and results to our clients across the globe. These promotions underscore our tradition of bringing together talented lawyers with diverse backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives,” said Robert D. Hays Jr., chairman of King & Spalding.

The following lawyers will be partners effective January 1, 2024:

• Erich Almonte (Houston) focuses on high stakes commercial disputes and environmental and mass torts in all sectors of the energy industry, with special expertise in regulatory disputes.

• Gardner Armsby (Atlanta) focuses on M&A and other transactions involving healthcare providers and other companies operating in the healthcare sector, serving as both a corporate deal lawyer and a healthcare regulatory advisor.

• Jessica Benvenisty (New York) is a trial and appellate litigator that works across a range of industry sectors and practice areas in bet-the-company situations. She has expertise in breach of contract and business torts cases, especially those arising from environmental emergencies, as well as intellectual property law.

• Katy Berger (New York) represents clients in a variety of structured finance transactions, including repos and note-on-note transactions, receivables finance, and securitizations and warehousing of esoteric asset classes, including data centers and solar assets, among others. 

• Matt Brigman (Atlanta) focuses on representing businesses in high stakes litigation in state and federal courts across the U.S., with particular expertise handling consumer class actions and litigation arising out of large-scale data breaches.

• Matthew Dawson (Silicon Valley) focuses primarily on complex commercial litigation, with substantial experience litigating licensing and intellectual property disputes.

• Kristen Freaso (New York) focuses on the structuring, origination, modification, and sale of mortgage and mezzanine construction loans secured by all commercial asset classes throughout the United States.

• James Gallagher (Charlotte) represents lenders and borrowers throughout the life cycle of debt financing transactions from origination and tack-on financings to pay off or restructuring scenarios.

• Kevin Gilroy (London) represents both creditors and borrowers on all aspects of finance and private credit, including fund finance, structured finance, real estate/development financing, and restructuring/special situations.

• Robert Griest (Atlanta) defends clients in complex litigation, including multidistrict litigation and class actions arising from data breaches and other data privacy matters, claims under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, and breach of contract and business tort cases.  

• David Hart (New York) represents a wide array of financial institutions and real estate funds in commercial real estate financing transactions across the country and across asset classes.

• Lindsey Henrikson (Chicago) represents private credit lenders, banks, hedge funds, and companies in all facets of in- and out-of-court restructurings. She has firm-leading expertise in Uniform Commercial Code foreclosures and other secured creditor rights and remedies.

• Nicholas Howell (Atlanta) represents clients in complex and technical environmental and toxic tort disputes, specializing in defending lawsuits that involve claims at the intersection of litigation and environmental regulatory law.

• Aaron Hullman (Washington, D.C.) represents private equity firms and companies in M&A transactions, equity investments and joint ventures, with a focus on transactions in the energy and infrastructure sectors.

• Will Jordan (Atlanta) represents public and private companies, including private equity firms and their portfolio companies, in a range of complex business transactions, including acquisitions, divestitures, carveouts and joint ventures.

• William McClintock (Washington, D.C.) represents companies and individuals navigating complex government investigations, enforcement actions, civil fraud litigation, and related matters.

• Amy O'Neill (Sacramento) represents large hospital systems in multi-million-dollar litigation matters against health insurance plans, and she also works with hospital clients as they work to improve their contract terms with insurance companies.

• Andy Peace (Charlotte) represents various banks and other financial institutions in real estate finance transactions ranging from originating construction loans to mortgage/mezzanine loans to loan-on-loans secured by a pledge of mortgage loans.

• Jenny Pelaez (Los Angeles) represents public companies facing high-stakes litigation, primarily class actions, involving alleged violations of antitrust, securities, and consumer protection laws, as well as defends clients in complex fraud, contract, and tort cases at the trial and appellate levels.  Her clients include companies in the financial services, accounting, technology, and entertainment industries.

• Drew Pollekoff (Northern Virginia) represents public and private companies and private equity funds in M&A, other complex business transactions and a variety of corporate matters.

• Billie Pritchard (Atlanta) defends high-stakes class actions and commercial matters, including complex consumer protection claims, sensitive professional liability matters, and enterprise-threatening contract disputes.

• Kim Roberts (London) splits her time between advising the firm as part of the General Counsel’s Office for EMEA regions and advising U.S. corporations with global operations on privacy law matters in multiple jurisdictions focusing on compliance with global privacy laws and crisis management situations such as security incidents.

• Mark Schlackman (Houston) focuses on representing project developers, private equity sponsors and strategic investors in transactions involving renewable and conventional power projects as well as midstream and downstream oil and gas assets.

• Jesse Snyder (Washington, D.C.) focuses on data privacy, intellectual property, and medical care with an emphasis on data-privacy class action litigation, preemptive assessments of risk, regulatory challenges, highly technical patent matters, and cannabis litigation.

• Peter Starr (Atlanta) defends clients from a range of industries against class-action claims—with particular emphasis on consumer class actions and federal securities fraud litigation. He also represents corporate defendants in complex business disputes.

• Amy Upshaw (Washington, D.C.) focuses on appellate and strategic litigation, especially relating to constitutional and administrative law, life sciences, and class actions.

• Nick Venetz (Denver) represents clients that are developing, investing in, acquiring, and disposing of energy and infrastructure assets, from individual projects, project pipelines and portfolios, to operating companies.

• Michael Vives (New York) represents a wide variety of industry-leading pharmaceutical, medical devices, and consumer products companies in high-stakes mass tort, product liability litigation.

The following lawyers will be counsel effective January 1, 2024.

• Lauren Gennett (Atlanta) focuses on the representation of healthcare clients in government enforcement matters, including defending healthcare clients in government investigations and False Claims Act litigation and representing clients in government audits and appeals.

• Blythe Kochsiek (Los Angeles) represents clients in high-stakes criminal, civil, and congressional matters – especially those in the technology and fintech space – with particular expertise defending against concurrent multi-agency investigations and parallel litigation.

• Margaret Nettesheim (London), dual-qualified in both the U.S. and UK, has a diverse international practice representing companies and individuals in cross-border criminal and regulatory investigations. She also assists clients with developing their financial crime compliance programs and conducting risk assessments, including in the context of due diligence for corporate transactions.

• Jeannine Novak (Atlanta) concentrates on defending products liability cases and maintains an active pro bono practice representing disabled veterans.

• Aamen Nsouli (New York) represents financial institutions and family offices in the acquisition and conventional and Shari’ah-compliant financing of real estate and private equity and debt investments in the United States.

• Kathleen Sacks (Washington, D.C.) represents companies and individuals primarily in the financial, chemical, and technology industries in high-stakes civil litigation, investigations, and government enforcement actions.  She also provides strategic advice in connection with corporate monitorships and all aspects of corporate compliance functions, with an emphasis on anticorruption and fraud compliance.

• Anneke Shepard (Atlanta) represents leading domestic and foreign automotive manufacturers in catastrophic injury and wrongful death actions. She also has experience defending toxic tort claims based on personal injury and groundwater contamination and personal injury claims based on pharmaceutical products.

• Blake Smith (Charlotte) primarily represents financial institutions providing credit facilities to private equity sponsors operating in a wide variety of sectors for acquisitions of target growth companies.

• Chad Stewart (Houston) focuses on complex commercial, antitrust, product liability, environmental, and construction litigation across the United States.

• Mikaela Stone (Denver) represents clients in high-profile IP matters in district court, the Federal Circuit, and before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board. She specializes in complex patent validity analysis to support competitor litigation.

• Jessica Stricklin (Chicago) advises clients across industries on executive compensation and global employee benefit matters. She also advises public company clients on compliance with executive compensation disclosure and reporting requirements.

• Jo Szucs (Chicago) provides comprehensive legal advice on global employee benefits to multinational clients.

• Matt Vandenberg (Austin) represents clients from across the globe in construction litigation and arbitration proceedings, with an emphasis on disputes related to projects in the energy and technology sectors.

• Julien Vicariot (Paris) focuses on representing public and private companies, investment banks and private equity funds, in their M&A, private equity, and capital markets transactions.

About King & Spalding

King & Spalding is an international law firm that represents a broad array of clients, including half of the Fortune Global 100, with 1,300 lawyers in 24 offices in the United States, Europe, the Middle East and Asia. The firm has handled matters in over 160 countries on six continents and consistently earns recognition for the results it obtains, uncompromising commitment to quality and dedication to understanding the business and culture of its clients. More information is available at www.kslaw.com.