Eric W. Richardson, Partner
Mr. Richardson has a broad range of legal experience related to the creation, organization, operations and financing of emerging growth private and public companies. His legal practice focuses on the areas of general corporate law (including corporate formation and governance, mergers and acquisitions, reverse mergers, and general business contract law), corporate finance (including private and public equity and debt financings and early stage venture capital financings), employment and compensation issues (including employment agreements and the development and administration of employee stock option and incentive plans) internet and software law (including licensing and distribution agreements), and general real estate law and commercial finance transactions.

Mr. Richardson previously served as the General Counsel of two publicly-traded internet companies, first with ProsoftTraining.com (NASDAQ: POSO) and then with Imergent, Inc. (AMEX: IIG). During his time with these companies, he was the sole internal legal counsel responsible for all aspects of the companies’ legal affairs, including intellectual property protection, software licensing agreements, software authoring and distribution agreements, real estate leasing, the preparation of private placement memoranda and the completion of private placements, employment law and employee severance issues, and SEC filings and compliance (e.g., current, quarterly and annual reports under the 1934 Act, Form S-1 and Form S-3 Registration Statements and Proxy Statements). Mr. Richardson negotiated, structured and documented key strategic relationships with AT&T, Netscape Communications Corporation, the Gartner Group, Novell Corporation, Hewlett-Packard Company, Silicon Graphics, GTE, Texas Instruments, Tech Data Corporation, Access Graphics, Inc., Vanstar Corporation and others. He served as Corporate Secretary for both companies and participated in all board meetings (including preparation of board minutes).

Mr. Richardson began his legal career in 1991 as an associate in the Los Angeles Office of Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy, where he engaged in a wide variety of corporate, real estate and commercial transactions, including initial public stock offerings, public and private debt offerings, real estate loans (representing both lenders and borrowers), real estate loan restructurings, asset purchase transactions involving real estate and personal property, secured lending, mortgage securitization, loan restructurings and workouts, oil and gas financing, commercial leasing, construction lending, real estate foreclosures, partnership and corporate formation, project finance, purchases of commercial loan pools from governmental authorities, leveraged buy-out transactions, and low-cost housing development.

Mr. Richardson received his Juris Doctor degree from The University of Michigan Law School in 1991, where he was a writer for the Michigan Environmental Bar Journal. He received is Bachelor of Arts from The University of Southern California in 1988, where he was the Captain of the USC Trojan Debate Squad and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.