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 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 facilitating new transactions such as bond issuances, and handling corporate reorganizations. With deep and broad knowledge in his legal specialties, Jim has served 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, with Alan Kolod, prepares the Practice Commentaries on New York’s codification of the 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.
He is a member of the TriBar Opinion Committee, is active in the Working Group on Legal Opinions Foundation where he serves on the Advisory Board, and in the Legal Opinions Committee of the American Bar Association’s Section of Business Law. 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, was Chair 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, was Chair of the Drafting Committee that prepared the City Bar’s Report supporting the enactment of New York’s LIBOR replacement legislation, and was a member of the drafting subcommittee of the City Bar’s Committee on Commercial and Uniform State Laws that prepared the report by the City Bar’s Task Force on Digital Technologies in support of the enactment of the New York version of the “Emerging Technologies” amendments to the official text of the Uniform Commercial Code, released February 15, 2023; and contributed to the Committee’s Report in Support of the Enactment of the Uniform Special Deposits Act promulgated by the Uniform Law Commission.