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.
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.
Reflecting on what Sadis & Goldberg have been busy focusing on in 2018, Geffner comments: “We have been active launching many closed end funds, including both private equity funds and venture capital funds, and open end funds, focusing on various strategies such as healthcare, technology, media and telecommunications, real estate, cannabis, opportunity zone funds and crypto-currency.”
Given that Geffner and his partners launch 70 to 80 funds each year, the firm has a good opportunity to better understand and influence industry standards.
As Geffner explains: “Having over 1,000 funds as clients, Sadis has had the experience of providing guidance on day-to-day legal matters such as commercial agreements, negotiations with investors, regulatory filings with the SEC, CFTC and FINRA, employment agreements and agreements amongst principals. Sadis takes pride in our deep bench of experienced and well trained lawyers who have practical day-to-day experience working with managers at all stages of their lifecycle.”
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.
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,” says Geffner, although he confirms that hedge funds are often at the forefront of adopting investment strategies in connection with evolving asset classes such as cannabis and crypto-currencies.
“In the last twelve months, we have seen a dramatic increase in managers launching products around these asset classes.”
Sadis has recently remodelled its offices in response to having increased its family of lawyers by about 20 per cent. Since January 2018, Sadis has added Paul Marino, Robert Cromwell, Nick Federici, Eliott Frank and Michelle Malone. “We also included Jennifer Risi, Digital Marketing, to our family. Later this year, we will be releasing our updated website which will also reflect our rebranding,” states 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. n