Adam Gale

Baker & Hostetler announced on Friday that Adam Gale, a former practice leader at Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo, has joined the firm as a partner to help launch a new investment funds team.

A onetime senior counsel at The Bank of New York, Gale spent roughly the past six years at Mintz, serving as co-leader of that firm's investment funds practice. His experience has focused on counseling middle-market investment funds on formation and structure, representing institutional investors in connection with their investments and guiding fund managers through regulatory compliance issues, according to Baker & Hostetler.

He has also advised clients on initial coin offerings in the cryptocurrency space and has advised broker-dealers on matters related to market regulation and Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) rules. Nodding to that experience in a statement on Friday, Baker & Hostetler's business group chairman, John Gherlein, said Gale would be a welcome addition to the firm.

“His deep understanding of the complexities surrounding private investment funds will be extremely beneficial to our clients,” Gherlein said.

Baker & Hostetler isn't simply bringing Gale on board as a lateral hire—he'll also co-head a new, multidisciplinary investment funds team along with Jessie Gabriel, a partner who has been with Baker & Hostetler for about a dozen years. The idea behind the new funds team is to bring together fund formation, regulatory, securities and litigation experts from across the firm who can advise a range of clients in the private equity, venture capital, hedge fund and real estate management sectors.

“The team provides a unique offering of full-time fund lawyers and other attorneys with a range of regulatory, transactional and litigation experience working as a single unit,” Baker & Hostetler said.

Gale said in an interview on Friday that he's excited to have a chance to work alongside Gabriel and tap into talent across the legal landscape at his new firm.

“Baker, with its 900 attorneys and 14 offices in the U.S., is a tremendous platform and has a top reputation and already has tremendous lawyers and expertise in the investment funds space,” he said. “It was a great opportunity to be able to build on that and provide great service to my fund clients and continue to build the practice at Baker.”

Gabriel said in an interview Friday that she, too, looked forward to partnering with Gale as co-leaders of the funds team. She expects the group will be able to tap into deep existing knowledge in the funds space, but she also noted that BakerHostetler has regulatory expertise in a number of specific industries in which funds are looking to invest.

She added that, while those capabilities aren't new to Baker & Hostetler, the new investment funds team will provide a formal home for combining knowledge from different parts of the firm. That, she said, will help the firm better serve clients, who are increasingly looking for lawyers who understand their business and what lies ahead.

“We had the pieces, we had the skill set, but we were driven toward this broader view,” Gabriel said. “With Adam coming on, it was just the perfect time to go forward with this.”