John M. Paris, Jr.

John Paris is the chair of the Williams Mullen Private Equity Group. He also serves as chair of the firm's Innovation Committee. A corporate securities lawyer, the core of his practice involves representing mature and growth stage companies in many different industries seeking equity and debt capital, as well as representing them in mergers and acquisitions, licensing transactions, leveraged buyouts, and strategic joint ventures. Mr. Paris also has significant experience structuring and forming venture capital, mezzanine, and buyout funds and representing them in their investments in portfolio companies. He regularly assists public companies in many industries in initial public and secondary offerings, merger proxies, 1934 Act filings, corporate governance, SEC advocacy throughout his career, with a focus on representing financial institutions, including banks, bank holding companies, business development companies and SBICs. He has assisted lenders and borrowers in PIPE transactions as well as investors and portfolio companies in so-called “angel financings”.

John Paris is the chair of the Williams Mullen Private Equity Group. He also serves as chair of the firm's Innovation Committee. A corporate securities lawyer, the core of his practice involves representing mature and growth stage companies in many different industries seeking equity and debt capital, as well as representing them in mergers and acquisitions, licensing transactions, leveraged buyouts, and strategic joint ventures. Mr. Paris also has significant experience structuring and forming venture capital, mezzanine, and buyout funds and representing them in their investments in portfolio companies. He regularly assists public companies in many industries in initial public and secondary offerings, merger proxies, 1934 Act filings, corporate governance, SEC advocacy throughout his career, with a focus on representing financial institutions, including banks, bank holding companies, business development companies and SBICs. He has assisted lenders and borrowers in PIPE transactions as well as investors and portfolio companies in so-called “angel financings.”

Mr. Paris has more than 26 years of experience representing U.S. corporations in public and private offerings of securities. He represents companies that invest and receive venture capital investments. He also represents public and private companies in U.S. and international mergers and acquisitions, and provides his clients advice on general business and other corporate matters.

In addition to representing underwriters and issuers in securities transactions, Mr. Paris helps publicly traded clients comply with applicable securities laws and Securities and Exchange Commission regulations. He advises clients on corporate governance, business development companies, SBICs, franchising matters, REITS, insider-trading compliance, anti-takeover and fiduciary duty matters and has substantial experience in corporate and securities law issues surrounding stock-based employee benefit and similar plans. He also advises investment advisory firms on matters involving the Investment Company Act of 1940, the Investment Advisors Act of 1940, and the Virginia Securities Act.

Mr. Paris serves on the Council for Entrepreneurial Development (CED) board of directors. He is the former president of the Virginia Venture Capital Forum and is the current chairman and co-founder of the Hampton Roads Business Hall of Fame. He serves as a member of the boards of directors of Junior Achievement of Greater Hampton Roads, Virginia Beach Vision, the Virginia I-81/I-64 Corridor Committee, Tidewater Venture Mentors and the Virginia Housing and Community Development Corporation. A frequent speaker, he has lectured on early stage funding, private equity topics, as well as general federal and state securities law issues and mergers and acquisitions matters to numerous groups, including bar and trade organizations. He serves as a board member for many private companies and is on the audit committee of several of these companies. Mr. Paris is also a contributing author to Inside the Minds: Private Equity and Venture Capital Client Strategies, with his chapter entitled “Turning Ideas into Cash Flow,” published in 2008.

He has been named one of Virginia's “Legal Elite”  in business law by Virginia Business magazine. In addition, Mr. Paris is listed in The Best Lawyers in America for Tax Law and has been named a “Super Lawyer” for Securities & Corporate Finance by Virginia Super Lawyers magazine.  John is the management committee representative of Williams Mullen in the Southern Law Network, a group of leading law firms in the Southeast. In addition, Martindale Hubbell has rated Mr. Paris an AV attorney, its highest rating available.

Mr. Paris is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate, with high distinction, from the University of Virginia in 1981. He graduated from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1984. He is a member of the Virginia State Bar and the Norfolk-Portsmouth, Virginia Beach and Virginia bar associations and also the Business Law Sections of the Virginia and American bar associations.