Mendi Sossamon

Ms. Sossamon leverages over twenty-five years of experience within law firms and as a senior in-house legal executive to craft legal solutions that fuel business growth. She is particularly skilled at balancing legal counsel against business objectives, risk tolerance and stakeholder priorities to distill varied considerations into practical and actionable counsel. These skills elevate legal support from annoying business hinderance to indispensable business partner. Ms. Sossamon’s career is marked by repeated recognition of these abilities and an exceptional track record in multiple environments.

Ms. Sossamon’s practice focuses on complex corporate and commercial transactions, outside general counsel services, and commercial optimization.

Representative Experience

Corporate and Commercial Transactions

Ms. Sossamon represents clients across the table from and within Fortune 100 companies, industry leaders, market makers and technology innovators to draft, negotiate and implement all forms of large-scale commercial contracts, licensing arrangements, strategic alliances, and joint ventures.

• Structure, draft, and negotiate high-volume of complex commercial contracts, including sales, advertising, marketing, software, consulting, and vendor agreements.
• Counsel a wide variety of businesses on M&A, divestitures, capital raises, licensing, joint ventures, and strategic partnerships.
• Draft and negotiate data usage agreements, including cross-border transfers of personal data, intellectual property protections, data privacy compliance, and indemnification arrangements.

• Represent top digital asset and search engine optimization provider in multi-million services agreements with leading companies in financial services including with JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sacks, and Rocket Mortgage.
• Represent premier development training provider in large scale multi-year services  and SaaS agreements with public and private institutions such as Columbia University, Emory University, New York University, University of Illinois, and Princeton University.
• Represent leading provider of online proctoring and other services related to higher-education and credentialing exams in large scale commercial arrangements for SaaS and services with respect to Educational Testing Service, Graduate Management Admission Council, Real Estate Council of Ontario, The British Council, and the Goethe Institute.
• Represent sales optimization services provider with respect to large scale SaaS and professional services contracting with companies such as American Express, Dow Jones, Kimberly Clark, Sodexo, Boehringer Ingelheim, Chevron and Ericsson.
• Conceive, draft, and negotiate worldwide legal documentation (Order Forms, Purchase Orders, SaaS Agreements, EULAs, Master Purchase Agreements, Data Privacy, and Information Security Addendums) relating to new go-to-market SaaS, technology, products, and professional services offerings, including integration of enterprise pricing and new market verticals.

Outside General Counsel Services

Ms. Sossamon is highly integrated with her clients as a senior business executive providing legal support for day-to-day operations; assessment, acquisition, and integration of new lines of business or capabilities; and evaluation and implementation of global expansion.

• Advise portfolio companies post private equity investment to address legal issues discovered in deal diligence; design and implement commercial contracting systems, policies, and processes; and upgrade and modernize all legal and risk arrangements to support next stage of growth.
• Conduct subject matter specific and cross functional legal risk assessments, including coordinate various subject matter experts, distill analysis to executive presentation, guide executive decision-making and implement change management.
• Provide strategic and tactical guidance on new businesses, products, and services to exploit intellectual property assets, assess regulatory risk, structure business and commercial transactions, and implement protective measures for intellectual property, technology, and brand assets.
• Represent numerous clients with respect to global expansion, new market entry, merger and acquisitions, and investments, including cross-border transactions.
• Update and/or create global data privacy, document retention, information classification, and information security policies and related legal documentation and agreements and successfully managed data privacy incident issues and communications.
• Lead legal support for global integration of transformative acquisition including harmonize employment agreements and policies; integrate legal entities, legal entity management, commercial contracting, and procurement; consolidate global real estate portfolio (including numerous lease terminations and new leases); and bunding of products and services.
• Create executive level briefings/presentations and employee presentations/training on intellectual property protection, sales and market positioning for legal issues, confidential information requirements and classifications, data privacy and information security.
• Served as Deputy General Counsel of a US publicly traded intellectual property, online content, and professional services company with leadership of commercial and vendor contracting, mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, intellectual property and licensing, and corporate development for $750m+ global business segment across 11 global offices and 30 countries.

Commercial Optimization

Ms. Sossamon conceives, leads, counsels, and manages transformative commercial optimization engagements harmonizing sales, legal, finance, CRM and CLM systems, and commercial templates, playbooks, processes, and procedures to accelerate commercial growth.

• Represent clients across varied industries and global markets with respect to review and improvement of commercial processes, templates, playbooks, and systems to streamline legal review and simplify commercial and vendor contracting.
• Counsel clients on procurement process and strategies to expedite complex commercial contracts, including with respect to the procurement process of companies such as Rocket Mortgage, Johnson & Johnson, AbbVie, Amazon, Ericsson, Heraeus, MetLife, and Keurig Dr. Pepper.
• Manage and draft portfolio of worldwide legal forms including order forms, purchase order forms and terms, confidentiality agreements, independent contractor agreements, terms of service, indemnification agreements.
• Conceive jurisdictional specific contracting arrangements including in countries such as Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, China, Singapore, Australia including secure and manage local counsel and integrate jurisdiction specific terms.
• Harmonize inputs from information security, risk management, and data privacy counsel to create vetted and calibrated responses to data privacy and security questionnaires, enabling client internal resources to cost-effectively manage such matters.
• Design and create materials, FAQs, templates, and other resources for legal matters in public and private requests for proposals and tenders, and train internal staff regarding same to minimize legal review and costs at RFP stage while positioning legal and risk issues for advantageous resolution post-RFP award.