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Practice Areas
Michael Sweeney is a co-founding shareholder of the firm and chairs the corporate practice. Mr. Sweeney serves as general corporate counsel to a wide variety of privately held businesses and regularly handles complex transactions for firm clients. These include mergers, sales and business acquisitions; venture capital and private equity financings; commercial/industrial and real estate financings; securities offerings and executive and equity-based compensation issues.
Work for Clients
Mr. Sweeney's clients include publicly traded and privately held companies in the technology, manufacturing and distribution, insurance, banking, trust and financial services, and e-commerce industries. The firm's clients range from large multi-national corporations to start-up and emerging growth businesses as well individual entrepreneurs and institutional investors.
Mr. Sweeney has counseled numerous clients from initial start-up formation through various stages of growth and financing, including initial and secondary public offerings and/or sale or merger.
Professional Recognition
Mr. Sweeney has been named as a leading corporate lawyer in the current editions of Chambers USA: America's Leading Business Lawyers, Woodward/White Inc's Best Lawyers in America and New England Super Lawyers. He is rated "AV" in Martindale Hubbell's Peer Review Ratings.
Professional Activities
Mr. Sweeney is a Fellow of the Rhode Island Bar Foundation, the charitable arm of the Rhode Island Bar Association. He is a frequent speaker/moderator at Rhode Island Bar Association seminars on corporate law topics. He is the past chair of the Rhode Island Bar Association Business Organizations Committee where he initiated and led the Committee's 3-year project to draft and seek enactment of the new Rhode Island Business Corporation Act, which took effect on July 1, 2005.
Member, Rhode Island Bar Association Business Organizations Committee, 1988-Present.
Member, Massachusetts and American Bar Associations (Member, Business Law Section).
Delegate, Rhode Island Bar Association House of Delegates, 2003-2005.
Board Memberships
Mr. Sweeney is a member of the President's Counsel at Providence College. Mr. Sweeney is a Trustee of the Providence Preservation Society and a member of the Board of Directors of RISE (Rhode Islanders Sponsoring Education). He served as Co-Chair of the Providence Children's Museum 2007-2008 Capital Campaign. Mr. Sweeney is a member of the 2007 City of Providence Tax Policy Working Group and a member of the Board of Trustees of the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce.
Over the years, Mr. Sweeney has served on a number of Boards of Directors of for-profit and non-profit entities.
Education
Providence College (B.S., 1985); St. John's University School of Law, (J.D., 1988). Senior Staff Member, St. John 's Law Review, 1986-1988.
Papers and Presentations
Comment, "The Attorney Work Product Doctrine: Approaching Absolute Immunity, Shelton v. American Motors Corporation," 61 St. John's Law Review 652 (1987); "Update on New SEC Executive Compensation Rules," Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly and Rhode Island Lawyers Weekly.
Bar and Court Admissions
Rhode Island (1988); Massachusetts (1990). | 