Ethan is the founder and Managing Member of Ethan Flaherty Law. As a true corporate generalist, he advises, counsels, and helps clients on a wide range of matters, including complex commercial contracts, technology and licensing matters, intellectual property and branding, M&A, corporate governance, joint ventures, legal and regulatory compliance, strategic initiatives, developing and implementing policies and processes, debt and equity financing, business succession planning, and general day-to-day business matters.
Ethan served as a Vice President and General Counsel at CashStar Inc. through its successful sale to Blackhawk Network, Inc. in 2017. Prior to CashStar, Ethan served as a Vice President and General Counsel at Cartera Commerce, Inc., which was successfully sold to Ebates. At both companies, Ethan was a member of the executive team and responsible for all legal matters arising in connection with ongoing operations, including negotiating and drafting strategic client and vendor agreements, managing intellectual property matters, ensuring regulatory compliance, managing litigation matters. He also excelled at working collaboratively on strategy and execution with the business leads in product, sales, marketing, finance, human resources, operations, security, compliance, and customer care. By leading with a hands-on, solution-driven, pragmatic approach, Ethan was able to successfully partner with the business team to drive consistently outstanding results for clients and internal teams.
Ethan has more than 15 years of private law firm experience, concentrating on mergers and acquisitions, corporate financings, complex commercial contracts, licensing, joint ventures, and intellectual property law, representing a wide range of start-ups, emerging growth, middle market, family owned businesses, and Fortune 500 companies, across a range of industries, including high tech, SaaS platform and managed services, professional services, medical and dental, and manufacturing businesses. He was a Partner and the head of the corporate and business practice at Pabian & Russell, LLC. Prior to Pabian & Russell, he was an attorney at the Boston offices of Nixon Peabody LLP (formerly Peabody & Brown), and Keegan Werlin & Pabian, LLP.
Ethan holds an AB in Biology from Brown University and his J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center.
Representative Work
| General Counsel | Partner |
| Negotiate and draft strategic client agreements, technology agreements, and other key vendor agreements | Represent start-up companies from formation through growth stages, including entity structuring, equity and debt financing, and similar |
| Manage all general corporate and governance, and legal and regulatory compliance and risk management | Develop standard form company agreement templates (e.g., contracts, NDAs, offer letters, executive agreements, etc.) |
| Comprehensive review and revamp of all standard agreement templates, T&Cs, privacy policy, and EULA, and trained sales/business teams on key terms, approach, and concepts | Negotiate and draft asset and stock purchase agreements and related documents for seller- and buyer-side transactions with transaction values up to $250 million |
| Create and implement contract development process and policy | Draft business succession/buy-sell agreements |
| Co-develop incident response playbooks with security and compliance teams | Negotiate complex commercial contracts with clients and vendors |
| Assist with client privacy and security compliance audits | Advise on branding and IP development, use, and protection strategies |
| Project manage inbound and outbound M&A opportunities | Negotiate loan and asset-based financing agreements |
| Manage evaluation and prosecution/ registration of patents and trademarks; inbound and outbound licenses; brand protection strategy | Develop and roll out company policies and procedures |
| Project manage cross-functional business initiatives (e.g., launch of new product; international expansion; roll-out of enhanced security framework) | Coordinate and manage outside experts (e.g., patent counsel, litigation counsel, valuation experts) |
| Project manage all relevant post-closing M&A strategic business and legal integration | Negotiate and draft offer letters, employment agreements, and severance arrangements |
| Manage patent troll and other commercial litigation; manage specialized outside legal counsel | Manage required general corporate and governance matters |
| Work proactively with heads of HR, finance, marketing, product, IT, tech ops, sales, customer care and risk, security, and compliance to identify gaps and implement solutions | Serve as strategic sounding board for Board of Directors, CEO, CFO, and executive team |
| Work closely with Board of Directors, Audit Committee, and Transaction Committee | Work proactively with key stakeholders to identify gaps and implement solutions |