Lowenstein Sandler has named New York-based partners Marie DeFalco and Sara Werner co-chairs of its newly formed Venture Funds Launch Group, the firm announced this week.
DeFalco, who has co-chaired Lowenstein’s Investment Management & Private Funds Group for years, brings more than 25 years of private funds and venture fund launch experience to the role. Werner adds more than 20 years in the same space. Together they’ll lead a practice built to advise venture fund managers on everything from forming and raising funds — including accelerators and funds of funds — to fund governance, compliance, regulatory matters, transactions and tax issues. The group also represents the limited partner investors on the other side of those funds, from institutional investors and sovereign wealth funds to endowments and family offices.
DeFalco is one of just 24 lawyers nationally individually ranked by Chambers Global for Venture Capital: Fund Formation, and Lowenstein is one of only seven U.S. law firms to earn a Chambers Global ranking in that category. The firm’s Emerging Companies & Venture Capital Group is separately ranked nationally by Chambers USA, as is its Investment Management & Private Funds Group.
“I’ve worked very closely with our Emerging Companies & Venture Capital Group for more than 25 years, advising many of the same clients from overlapping or different angles,” DeFalco said. “I’m thrilled to have Sara as my co-chair, as she also has been performing an important leadership role in our Venture Funds Launch practice since joining us.”
Werner said much of her practice centers on building venture and growth equity funds and firms — work she called some of the most exciting in advising fund managers, informed in part by experience on the flip side, stepping in when venture firm partnerships fracture.
Ed Zimmerman, chair and co-founder of Lowenstein’s Emerging Companies & Venture Capital Group, said he has worked with DeFalco since the two were associates together in the late 1990s, and credited Werner’s arrival with transforming the practice. Robert Minion, chair of the firm’s Investment Management & Private Funds Group, said the new group lets Lowenstein apply insight from its broader private funds practice — covering hedge, private equity and multi-strategy funds — to the specific needs of venture managers and their investors.
The Venture Funds Launch Group also draws on attorneys across Lowenstein’s tax, executive compensation, employment, intellectual property, fintech/crypto, litigation and regulatory practices. Lowenstein Sandler has more than 400 lawyers across offices in New York, Palo Alto, Roseland, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, Washington, D.C. and Wilmington.
