About John Berton, Attorney at Law

Born and raised in Manhattan’s East Village, John is the product of New York City public schools, including Stuyvesant High School.

A graduate of Harvard Law School and Williams College, John has been practicing law for 20 years in various settings, from the high desert of Carson City, where he interned on the Nevada State Supreme Court and lived in a cabin on the shores of nearby Lake Tahoe, to a blue chip career in the concrete canyons of Wall Street, where he focused on corporate and securities law at Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton, a major international law firm.

He then opted to go in-house, first joining the General Counsel’s Office at Goldman Sachs for 11 years and then moving to Jane Street Capital, a privately held trading firm.

In the late 90s and early 2000s, John helped found and run a successful real estate business developing high-end residential lofts in historic buildings in Soho and Tribeca in his spare time.

Throughout his career, John has balanced a knack for specializing with the broad curiosity of a generalist.

At Goldman Sachs, John became a leading expert on the esoteric problems faced by owners of large blocks of publicly traded stocks seeking to monetize, hedge, or borrow against the value of their restricted equity positions and went on to become a senior legal advisor to the firm’s prime brokerage business, serving Goldman’s hedge fund clients.

But he did not limit his focus – he served as general counsel to many smaller stand-alone companies within the Goldman family, gaining practical experience advising on the varied governance, securities, transactional, and general corporate legal issues to which he now seeks to devote his time.

At Jane Street, a large privately held “quant” trading firm with 300 employees and offices worldwide, John honed his skills as deputy general counsel, advising on everything from immigration and employment to vendor relationships, regulatory and compliance matters, and day-to-day trading issues.

John’s goal is to provide general legal advice while leveraging his broad and deep experience with sophisticated transaction and securities work to assist smaller businesses that don’t need a full-time in-house lawyer but shouldn’t have to deal with big-firm rates and turn-around time every time a potential legal issue or question arises, whether it is a routine agreement or a significant transaction or corporate event.

John has the experience, expertise, and judgment to spot, analyze, and solve problems quickly and the good sense to know immediately when a situation requires the resources of a large firm or specialized co-counsel (which John will facilitate through his extensive network of former colleagues with diverse and sophisticated practices).

John will keep costs down when work requires farming out by managing the process and ensuring the other lawyers focus on the business.

A lifelong New Yorker, John has never lived above 14th Street. He has three children and resides in Tribeca. He is also a certified Kundalini yoga instructor and enthusiastic yoga and meditation student.

John’s purpose in establishing his solo practice is to create a sustainable life-work balance that allows him to pursue a strict yoga and meditation regimen and remain actively involved in his children’s upbringing while also enjoying the challenges and stimulation of providing first-rate, sophisticated legal representation to a diverse and exciting client base of entrepreneurs and investors.