I bring a direct and personal style to my interactions with my clients. They come to me because I’m a recognized authority in financing and legal opinion matters. I have a great deal of security in my knowledge, and I can in turn instill that confidence in my clients and help make them comfortable with the decisions they make and the strategies they choose.
Noted corporate attorney and litigator Jim Gadsden focuses his practice on structured finance, corporate trust, restructuring, and bankruptcy matters. In addition to representing issuers of high-yield and asset-backed securities and borrowers on syndicated lending facilities, he frequently advises corporate trustees for corporate and municipal debt in connection with the issuance of the debt and with defaults and restructurings, including Chapter 11 bankruptcy cases. His practice is both national and international in scope.
Jim enjoys the intellectual challenges and interesting mix of his work, which includes advocating for parties in litigation, facilitating new transactions such as bond deals, and handling corporate reorganizations. As the Covid-19 pandemic and the rise of online buying continue to inflict economic fallout on many retailers and brick-and-mortar shopping centers and malls, Jim anticipates that these conditions will drive a strong need for his bankruptcy-related legal guidance for the foreseeable future.
With deep and broad knowledge in his legal specialties, Jim serves as an expert witness in litigation involving indenture interpretation issues. He frequently speaks at conferences and seminars and has built a strong record of credentials in his field. He is a past Chair of the Committee on Trust Indentures and Indenture Trustees of the American Bar Association’s Section of Business Law.
A frequent author of published works, Jim contributed the chapter on Corporate Trust Opinions to the Legal Opinions in Corporate Transactions treatise published by Practicing Law Institute in 2014 and revised in 2019 and the Practice Commentaries on New York’s recently enacted Uniform Voidable Transactions Act. Additionally, Jim served as a member of the drafting committee for the ABA’s Revised Model Simplified Indenture, published in The Business Lawyer in 1999, the Model Negotiated Covenants, published in The Business Lawyer in 2006, and the Annotated Trust Indenture Act, published in The Business Lawyer in 2012. A full list of his publications with links to copies of many is available here.
Jim is a member of the TriBar Opinion Committee, where he is a member of the Advisory Board, and stays active in the Working Group on Legal Opinions Foundation and the Legal Opinions Committee of the Business Law Section of the American Bar Association. He was the reporter for the Special Report on the Preparation of Substantive Consolidation Opinions by the Committee on Structured Finance and the Committee on Bankruptcy and Corporate Reorganization of The Association of the Bar of the City of New York, and chaired of the Subcommittee of the Committee on Commercial and Uniform State Laws that prepared the City Bar’s report recommending that New York enact the Uniform Voidable Transactions Act, and chaired the Drafting Committee of the LIBOR Replacement Legislation Working Group that proposed the New York City Bar Report supporting the enactment of LIBOR replacement legislation in New York.