- Managing Partner: Keith C Jones
- Number of partners: 52
- Number of other lawyers: 50
FIRM OVERVIEW: Verrill Dana is a mid-sized firm with a strong regional presence. While the firm is able to handle the most complex legal needs of clients with interests around the globe, its streamlined size allows it to remain nimble, staffing each matter with experienced counsel, ready to address the individual concerns of each client with personal attention and understanding of each client’s business.
MAIN AREAS OF PRACTICE:
Bankruptcy & Commercial Law: The attorneys in this group regularly provide aggressive representation to lenders, creditors’ committees, debtors, trade creditors, and trustees in both Chapter 11 and Chapter 7 cases.They also represent shareholders, partners, directors, officers, guarantors, preference defendants, and others in matters involving bankruptcy and financial distress. For clients experiencing financial distress, this department’s attorneys explore non-bankruptcy alternatives, but are also skilled in using the Chapter 11 process to either reorganize or conduct a going concern sale.
Benefits & Compensation: Verrill Dana’s Employee Benefits and Executive Compensation Practice Group has three decades of experience advising employers on all aspects of ERISA, the Internal Revenue Code, and other laws relevant to retirement plans, health and other welfare benefit plans, executive compensation arrangements, equity based compensation, and fringe benefits. With the group’s practice having expanded well beyond its original northern New England base, its clients include regional, national and global entities, both for-profit and tax-exempt, and its attorneys serve as U.S. benefits counsel for several multinational businesses.
Business Law: Members of this group currently serve as primary outside counsel to several dozen companies, large and small, public and private, spanning a broad range of industries and business sectors. They represent clients in mergers and acquisitions, reorganizations, joint ventures, private and public securities offerings, complex multi-party commercial financings, proxy contests, and takeover battles. The group includes wellregarded advisors on fiduciary duty, securities law and tax issues for executives, directors and owners of businesses. They advise companies and individuals on compensation arrangements, conflicts-of-interest, and reporting obligations. The recent addition of Den White, past Chairman of the global board of directors of the Association for Corporate Growth, has expanded the group’s regional capacity.
Energy Law: Verrill Dana is actively involved in representing regional energy companies in state and federal regulatory proceedings and commercial transactions. This multidisciplinary group provides clients with comprehensive legal services for permitting and development of new generating facilities, natural gas pipelines and high voltage transmission lines. They have successfully permitted every large-scale wind energy project in Maine. The group’s attorneys also counsel electric and gas utilities on proactive strategies to both anticipate regulatory developments and successfully manage the regulatory process, both at FERC and state regulatory commissions.
Environmental Law: Members of the firm’s Environmental Law Group provide clients with proactive advice to successfully manage the full range of their permitting, compliance, development and litigation needs.
Labor & Employment & Immigration: Verrill Dana’s labor and employment and immigration attorneys are experienced, aggressive and creative. They have formulated and managed cutting-edge labor relations strategies in the construction industry, tried cases to verdict for one of the nation’s largest defense contractors and served as trial counsel for Fortune 500 companies. Verrill Dana’s immigration and global migration attorneys represent individuals, corporations, hospitals, educational institutions and other organizations throughout the US and globally.
Litigation & Trial: Verrill Dana’s litigation and trial attorneys work collaboratively with clients to understand and solve their problems, ensuring that clients’ resources are used efficiently to achieve legal victories that translate into commercial and personal successes. They are experienced in matters involving complex commercial disputes, antitrust, bankruptcy, civil rights, insurance coverage, construction, surety, white-collar criminal defense, employment, environmental, ERISA, family law, franchise and dealership, intellectual property, personal injury, probate, public campaigns, real estate, school, professional malpractice and securities law.
Real Estate: The Real Estate Group counsels and advises individuals, businesses, and professional groups on the ownership, purchase, development, leasing and sale of real estate, boundary disputes, easements, real estate trust and zoning matters. Verrill Dana’s real estate lawyers represent lenders and developers in negotiating, structuring, and documenting commercial, retail, residential, and industrial transactions and developments. They bring substantive knowledge to all traditional real estate law matters, as well as to related areas such as corporate law, securities law and banking law.
Timberlands: Widely recognized as an innovative leader in legal issues related to timberlands acquisition, ownership, and management, Verrill Dana’s Timberlands Group represents clients across the country and around the globe on matters ranging from multi-state, multi-parcel acquisitions involving millions of acres, to tax planning for family-owned woodlots, to conservation easements and ecosystem services agreements. Consisting of a multi-disciplinary team of lawyers with a deep knowledge of the forest products industry, the firm’s Timberlands Group provides highly efficient representation tailored to each client’s individual needs.
CLIENTS: Bangor Hydro-Electric Company; Bank of America, N.A.; Bowdoin College; Chamilia; Cole Haan; Conservation Forestry LLC; Diversified Communications; First Wind; GMO Renewable Resources; Hannaford Bros. Co.; J.M.Huber Corporation; LL Bean; Plum Creek Timber Company; Spectra Energy/Maritimes & Northeast Pipeline; TD Bank; TransCanada; Verizon Wireless; Waste Management.