Paul Hastings LLP

Firm Details 

Chairman: Seth Zachary

Managing Partners: Frank Lopez, Sherrese Smith

Number of partners: 320

Number of lawyers (globally): 1,150

Firm Overview: 

With widely recognized elite teams across finance, mergers and acquisitions, private equity, restructuring and special situations, litigation, employment and real estate, Paul Hastings is a premier law firm providing superior intellectual capital and execution globally to the world’s leading investment banks, asset managers and corporations.

The firm is one of only a handful of law firms ranked across multiple core finance areas, including structured credit, leveraged finance, private credit, capital markets, and real estate finance. Paul Hastings is ranked as one of the top firms in the world in The American Lawyer’s “Premier League” for momentum, profit and prestige among Am Law 100 firms in 2022.

Practice Areas: FinTech 

FinTech at Paul Hastings 

The global Paul Hastings FinTech team is well-known for offering clients – ranging from leading global institutions to innovative startups – unparalleled and comprehensive FinTech guidance in complex matters involving payment systems, bank regulatory, and legislative issues. Its broad range of transactional and regulatory engagements puts it at the leading edge of all related FinTech issues, informing its knowledge of critical new developments that may impact its clients.

Transactional Advice that Advances Innovation 

As a leader in handling matters involving FinTech, the firm's global team advises some of the world’s largest payments networks on domestic and international mobile payments issues, new global money transmission products, and strategic acquisitions to expand network operations internationally. The firm also advises clients on various international business activities, as well as issues specific to the financial services, direct marketing, and healthcare industries.

The firm has played a leading rolein some of the most significant and complex M&A and capital raising transactions in the industry, ranging from community bank acquisitions to multibillion-dollar deals involving major national and international institutions and financial services firms.

The firm's FinTech clients include:

·Legacy depositories, payments companies, and card networks who are innovating or contracting with FinTech entities

·Trusted platform companies, for which financial services contribute a significant percentage of their business

·Private equity and venture capital firms investing in and existing outside of FinTech companies, and the ongoing representation of those FinTech portfolio companies

·FinTech startups as they develop and commercialize their product offerings

·Cryptocurrency companies along the entire range of crypto offerings from blockchain development to crypto exchanges, DeFi and DApps, and ecosystem development

Insightful Government Affairs and Regulatory Advice 

The firm represents clients before every US federal banking agency and many state banking agencies in matters involving regulatory initiatives, regulatory legislation, and enforcement actions, and our lawyers have deep experience drafting complex financial legislation and navigating it through the legislative process. Additionally, the firm frequently represents clients before the UK’s Financial Services Authority.

The team also conducts system-wide compliance reviews and internal investigations, and regularly advises clients on Bank Secrecy Act and USA PATRIOT Act requirements, as well as Dodd-Frank Act compliance issues, OFAC regulations, and US, EU, and other anti-money laundering rules and regulations.