Neil Wertlieb
Neil J Wertlieb teaches Counseling the Start-Up. Wertlieb is an experienced transactional lawyer who provides expert witness services in litigation and arbitration matters. He has served as an expert witness in dozens of litigated disputes, relating primarily to either business transactions, corporate governance and fiduciary duties, or attorney ethics and attorney standard of care. He is visiting from UCLA School of Law, where he is a lecturer in law, and has taught a transaction skills course every year since 2002.
Wertlieb has practiced transactional law for over three decades, most recently as a partner at the law firm of Milbank LLP, where his practice focused primarily on acquisitions, securities offerings and restructurings. He has represented clients in a wide variety of business matters, including formation and early round financings, mergers and acquisitions, initial public offerings, international securities offerings and other international transactions, fund formations, joint ventures, partnerships and limited liability companies, reorganizations and restructurings, independent investigations and general corporate and contractual matters.
Wertlieb is a former chair of each of the following committees of the California State Bar: the Executive Committee of the Business Law Section; the Corporations Committee; and the Committee on Professional Responsibility and Conduct. He is the co-chair and a founding member of the Ethics Committee of the California Lawyers Association, and former chair of the Professional Responsibility and Ethics Committee of the Los Angeles County Bar Association. He is also senior advisor, Milbank@Harvard, to Harvard Law School Executive Education. Wertlieb also served as a judicial extern for Justice Stanley Mosk on the California Supreme Court (1983).
Wertlieb is the general editor of the legal treatise Ballantine & Sterling: California Corporation Laws. He has been recognized in The Legal 500 for his M&A work and was recognized by California Law Business as one of the top 100 most influential lawyers in California.
Wertlieb received his law degree in 1984 from the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, and his undergraduate degree in Management Science from the School of Business also at the University of California at Berkeley. He is admitted to practice in California, New York and Washington, D.C.