PHILADELPHIA, August 13, 2014: Morgan Lewis is pleased to announce that Business and Finance partner Colby W. Smith has been named by The Legal Intelligencer as one of its Lawyers on the Fast Track. The annual competition honors Pennsylvania lawyers under the age of 40. This year’s 36 winners will be profiled in the publication in September and recognized at a dinner in Philadelphia in November.
Mr. Smith, who was elevated to partner last year, counsels clients in a wide range of business law matters, with an emphasis on public and private merger and acquisition transactions and securities offerings. His clients include high-profile companies in the technology, healthcare, energy, consumer products, private equity, and pharmaceutical industries, among others. He has represented them in a variety of transactions, including mergers, acquisitions, and employee stock ownership plans, including deals valued into the billions of dollars.
In addition, Mr. Smith serves as chair of the Pro Bono Committee in Morgan Lewis’s Philadelphia office. In this role, he has primary responsibility for developing pro bono opportunities for the office, overseeing pro bono representations and working with legal services organizations and other pro bono partners to benefit the neediest members of the community. His own personal pro bono practice includes regularly advising a leading domestic violence service provider on corporate governance issues. He also was instrumental in developing a unique financial literacy and investor protection clinic for local veterans.
In 2013 one of the transactions in which Mr. Smith was involved—in which a global pharmaceutical services company sold a large unit of its business—was named recipient of the ACG New York Champion’s Award, Cross-Border Deal of the Year (over $250 million). Mr. Smith is also active in the Association of Corporate Counsel’s DELVACCA Chapter, which serves the Philadelphia region, the Lehigh Valley, Southern New Jersey, and Delaware.