Bio

Lawrence Bernfeld is a partner of Graubard Miller and a member of the firm's Executive Committee. Lawrence negotiates and closes business transactions, leads the firm's employment practice, and litigates complex corporate, commercial, intellectual property, securities, and real estate disputes. When representing clients in business matters, Lawrence draws on his litigation background to analyze risk and place clients in a secure position. His counseling experience, in turn, permits him to identify creative business solutions when clients face potential litigation. Lawrence's litigation experience encompasses mediation, arbitration, trials, and appeals. Subject areas have included business appraisals and dissolution, close corporations, class actions, complex contract and commercial matters, cooperative corporations and condominiums, defamation, directors and officers liability, employment, entertainment, intellectual property, internal corporate investigations, publishing, real estate, shareholder derivative actions, and securities and futures industry disputes. His mediation, trial, and appellate practice takes him into venues that include Federal and State courts, the EEOC, FINRA, JAMS, and the AAA. In his transactional work, Lawrence focuses on mergers and acquisitions, distressed assets, hedge funds, private equity, and venture capital. He counsels clients regarding business plan development, confidentiality and non-compete arrangements, distribution agreements, executive employment and stock option agreements, change of control, termination, and severance agreements, entertainment contracts, secured financing, information technology, and investment fund, intellectual property, licensing, partnership, and joint venture agreements. Lawrence provides employment law guidance on issues relating to disabilities, discrimination, fair credit reporting, family and medical leave, fair labor standards, health care, and other government programs and requirements. Working with senior executives and directors of human resources, he develops and refines personnel policies, procedures, manuals, and training programs. He also prepares agreements to govern terms of employment, including restrictive covenants, and to protect against inappropriate disclosure of trade secrets and confidential information. Lawrence offers early-stage advice to help clients achieve a favorable position when they anticipate employment litigation. BusinessNewsDaily.com quoted Lawrence in an article entitled "Is That Legal? Facebook, Background Checks & Drug Tests." The New York Law Journal in several lead articles has reported on significant litigation results that Lawrence has achieved. Other publications such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Copyright Law Journal also have featured his cases. Lawrence has given bar association and law school lectures on trial practice, mediation, and securities arbitration. His article on "Class Actions and Federal Securities Laws" has been published in the Cornell Law Review and the Securities Law Review. He has served as a member of the Committee on Futures Regulation of the New York City Bar Association. Lawrence also is a member of the Federal Bar Council, the American Bar Association, and the Private Investment Subcommittee of the Securities Regulation Committee of the New York State Bar Association.