Jonathan Lipnick

Jon focuses his practice on the representation of private investment firms in all aspects of their business and operations, with a particular emphasis on the formation, marketing, management and legal and regulatory compliance of private investment funds, as well as the operational, economic, legal and regulatory issues faced by their sponsors. In addition, he advises sponsors on a variety of corporate matters including marketing arrangements, bespoke seeding arrangements, custody issues, subscription lines of credit, confidentiality agreements and general firm governance.

Jon is one of the leaders of Kirkland’s venture capital fund formation practice. In the last several years, Jon has advised several top-tier venture capital and growth equity firms in connection with their fundraising activities, as well as asset management M&A and other strategic firm-level and fund-level transactional matters, and counsels firm leaders with respect to the structure and design of their management company and general partner entities (including firm ownership and operations, compensation models, succession planning and executive transitions). Jon and his teams use a data driven approach harnessed from Kirkland’s broader fund formation platform to provide clients with strategic business advice, thought partnership and cutting edge technology.

Jon has served as a panelist and roundtable moderator on venture capital fundraising at several L Suite / TechGC VCGC conferences, as the moderator of the “State of VC” panel at Harvard Business School’s 30th annual Venture Capital & Private Equity conference, as a speaker on the “Legal Side of Venture” panel at Harvard Undergraduate Venture Capital Group’s 2025 Entrepreneurship Summit, as a speaker for PEI’s Private Funds CFO Forum Venture Circle and as a frequent guest speaker on venture capital fund formation at the Boston University Questrom School of Business and the Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law.

Georgetown University, B.A., 2004; Northeastern University School of Law, J.D., 2014