Sadis & Goldberg LLP is one of New York’s leading financial services-focused law firms. Known both domestically and internationally as a dominant force in the financial services sector, Sadis & Goldberg serves clients throughout the world. The Financial Services Group is headed up by partner Ron Geffner (pictured) and comprised of 15 attorneys that have each spent a significant amount of their career practicing in the private fund space, providing a compelling roster of seasoned legal advisers.
Many of the attorneys were trained at the world’s largest law firms, firms that specialise in the private fund space and/or have prior working experience with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. All of the attorneys in the group embrace the entrepreneurial spirit of the firm.
Sadis & Goldberg has not only been intimately involved with the creation of various investment products, but also with many of the distribution models including seed transactions, acceleration capital, creation of hedge fund platforms, joint ventures, and the retention of third party marketers. Working with over 1,000 funds, the firm is actively involved in the most current legal trends in the industry.
Its partners routinely handle a diverse range of enquiries, providing legal counsel to domestic and international financial institutions, family offices, hedge funds, private equity funds, venture capital funds, real estate funds and commodity pools.
“Our focus has been on managers domiciled in the US as well as managers across Europe, the Middle East, Asia and South America,” says Geffner. “We are agnostic on strategy, but over the last several years we’ve seen a material growth in alternative funding strategies. These include hard money lending, asset-backed lending and litigation finance.”
“In addition, we’ve seen a continued demand for equity and quantitative-related strategies; global macro, equity long/short, real estate and have been engaged by several firms who are employing crypto-currency strategies.”
Unlike many of its competitors, Sadis’ lawyers are remunerated by performance rather than billings and collections alone. This model, according to Geffner, provides the following advantages to its clients: (i) direct access to the partners; and (ii) partners delegate the work to the appropriate level to ensure the work is done cost-efficiently. The firm places significant emphasis on training and teamwork within the group structure, thus ensuring a consistent quality to its clients.
“In many cases our clients lean on us for routine aspects of law, such as a real estate leases, employment agreements, reviewing and negotiating equipment contracts, trust and estate tax planning, regulatory filings, etc. We give our clients a broad range of legal services,” says Geffner.
Sadis & Goldberg represents institutional managers, middle market managers as well as start-up and emerging managers. “Our breadth across the hedge funds industry is very broad,” states Geffner, confirming that the firm is currently speaking to a large number of start-up managers spanning multiple strategies. “The list would be too long to mention in detail,” adds Geffner.
What makes Sadis & Goldberg unique, compared to other law firms, is its low turnover of clients; a testament to the quality and experience of its partners. Within the firm, client matters are assigned to lawyers of appropriate seniority with the necessary partner supervision.
“Our team has been working together for well over a decade. Separately, we are proud to be familiar with commercial terms in the marketplace and given the number of funds and managers we represent, our clients are often setting the cadence for the industry,” comments Geffner.
On winning this year’s award, Geffner concludes: “It is an honour and our family appreciates the client support and the recognition of our esteemed peers.”
