Jessica Joy Richards
Senior Associate
Jessica Richards is a senior associate in the Global Corporate Practice. Her practice focuses on a variety of corporate transactional and commercial matters, including mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, reorganizations, corporate compliance and corporate governance. Jessica specializes in advising clients on strategic joint ventures and corporate matters with respect to companies desiring to leverage success to become employee owned through employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs), including advising companies, sellers and trustees in connection with those ESOP transactions with a specific focus on corporate restructuring prior to the ESOP transaction.
Jessica’s commercial representation consists of US and cross-border commercial arrangements, including all aspects of distribution and supply chain arrangements, goods and services agreements, MSAs, SaaS and hosting agreements, and other unique commercial arrangements. She represents clients in both public and privately held companies across a wide range of industries, including manufacturing, healthcare, real estate, waste management, media and advertising, energy and technology.
Jessica advises companies on a variety of corporate restructuring and board related matters, including internal mergers, board evaluations and restructuring.
Jessica has prior experience in-house at a non-profit healthcare company that provides senior housing and healthcare communities across the country. While there, Jessica’s practice focused on strategic initiatives and novel approaches to healthcare transactions.
She prides herself on helping clients meet their goals in creative ways and leverages her skills in general corporate counsel and legal issues to deliver effective and efficient legal solutions to clients.
Jessica is a member of the Women in Transactions Committee of the Association for Corporate Growth and a member of the Willis Society at Ohio Northern University. Jessica started and currently leads the Women in Transactions group in the firm’s Columbus office.
- Representation of domestic and international sellers in various commercial agreements, including supply and distribution agreements/terms of sale.
- Representation of a large engineering and manufacturing business in various commercial transactions, including manufacturing supply agreements and engineering services agreements at both the customer and supplier levels.
- Representation of a company in its redemption and stock sale into a 100% owned ESOP in the amount of US$40 million.
- Representation of a construction company in its redemption and stock sale into a 100% owned ESOP for over US$100 million.
- Representation of various trustees of ESOPs in connection with ESOP transactions.
- Advising a publicly traded manufacturing company with a market cap of approximately US$1 billion in various M&A and commercial transactions, including SEC compliance matters.
- Representation of a regional solid waste management company in multiple M&A transactions ranging from US$10 million to US$130 million and providing ongoing counsel with respect to commercial contracts and corporate governance.
- Representation of various technology companies in Software as a Service and other licensing and sales-based agreements, commercial matters and M&A transactions.
- Drafting website and mobile application terms of use, privacy policies and other disclosure policies in accordance with evolving privacy disclosure legislation.
- Served as in-house counsel managing novel strategic joint ventures and other transactions.
Education
- Ohio Northern University, J.D., with high distinction, articles research editor, Ohio Northern University Law Review, 2013
- Ohio Northern University, B.A., with high distinction, 2009
Admissions
- Ohio, 2013