Delaware Supreme Court Justice to Join Sidley Austin

[New York]—Sidley Austin LLP announced today that Justice Jack B. Jacobs of the Delaware Supreme Court is joining the firm as Senior Counsel, effective October 1, 2014. He will be a member of the Mergers and Acquisitions transactional and litigation practices, as well as the Corporate Governance practice. He will continue to reside in Wilmington, Delaware.

Justice Jacobs has served on the Delaware Supreme Court since 2003 and announced his retirement from that Court in April, effective June 25, 2014. Before joining the Supreme Court, he had served as Vice Chancellor of the Delaware Court of Chancery since 1985. 

“Justice Jacobs will be an exceptional addition to our firm and a great asset to our many public company clients,” said Carter G. Phillips, chair of the firm’s executive committee. “His experience and expertise are extraordinary and are only matched by his collegial nature.”

“The 29 years he has served in the Delaware judiciary have been the most eventful decades in the development of corporate law relating to public company mergers and corporate governance,” said Thomas A. Cole, chair of the executive committee for 15 years ending in 2013.  “As a participant in many pivotal decisions during that era, Justice Jacobs can lend invaluable insights to our clients and colleagues.”

“Just as I have been honored to serve as a member of one of this country’s premier judiciaries for the past 29 years, I am equally privileged to join one of the world’s finest law firms, Sidley Austin,” said Justice Jacobs. “In moving to this next stage of my career, I look forward to having as colleagues the highly talented men and women who embody an extraordinary firm culture that combines practice at the highest level with exceptional collegiality.”

Prior to his tenure as Vice Chancellor of the Delaware Court of Chancery, Justice Jacobs practiced corporate and business litigation in Wilmington, Delaware, since 1968. He is currently Adjunct Professor of Law at the Law Schools of New York University, Columbia University, Vanderbilt University, and the University of Pennsylvania. He is a member of the American Law Institute and serves as an advisor on its Principles of the Law of Liability Insurance Projects; and is also a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation and an Advisory Board Member of the Rand Center for Corporate Ethics and Governance.

Throughout his illustrious career Justice Jacobs has participated in academic symposia and continuing legal education programs related to corporate and securities law. He also has guest lectured at numerous American and foreign law schools, delivering the Distinguished Jurist Lecture at the University of Pennsylvania Law School; the Regent’s Lecture in Residence at the UCLA Law School; the Morrison & Foerster Lecture at Stanford Law; and the William J. Brennan Lecture at NYU School of Law. He was the Distinguished Visiting Jurist at the Harvard Law School Corporate Governance Program and serves as a member of the Board of Advisors of the Planning Committee of the Tulane Corporate Law Institute.

Justice Jacobs has been an invited guest speaker in various conferences, including those sponsored by the Asian Corporate Governance Association; the Korea Development Institute; the University of Tokyo, Japan; and academic conferences at Oxford University (U.K.) co-sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and in Israel co-sponsored by the Columbia Law School and Ono College in Tel Aviv, among others. He has authored and co-authored numerous law review articles addressing various aspects of corporation law, mergers and acquisitions, and corporate governance. Justice Jacobs holds an undergraduate degree from the University of Chicago, a law degree from Harvard University, and an LLD (Honorary) from Widener University.

Sidley’s corporate and securities practice comprises one of the firm’s largest areas of focus with more than 700 lawyers worldwide concentrating in Corporate Finance, Mergers and Acquisitions and Corporate Governance. The firm provides corporate and securities legal services to more than 100 publicly-traded U.S. companies in a wide range of industries, including almost one-half of the Fortune 100. Sidley serves as designated underwriters’ counsel to many other publicly-traded companies. It has a tremendous depth of corporate and securities experience and resources, and its lawyers advise clients on highly specialized corporate law matters. Lawyers in the firm’s corporate practice focus on specialties such as specific types of public and private offerings (including debt, IPOs and other equity deals, convertible transactions, derivatives, etc.); M&A (public and private); private equity, venture capital and hedge funds; Sarbanes-Oxley, Dodd-Frank and corporate governance; executive compensation; SEC accounting matters; and SEC rulemaking initiatives.

With more than 1,800 lawyers in 19 offices worldwide, Sidley has built a reputation as a premier legal adviser for global businesses and financial institutions. For the fourth consecutive year, and every year since the survey’s inception, Sidley received the most first-tier national rankings of any U.S. law firm in the 2014 U.S. News – Best Lawyers® “Best Law Firms” survey. On Law360’s list of Global 20 Firms, Sidley was ranked among the top law firms “with the greatest global reach and expertise.” To stay up-to-date with the latest Sidley news, please follow us on Twitter at @SidleyNewsroom or download the Sidley Mobile App.