Richard Soden, a former partner and currently counsel in the firm’s Business Law Department, specializes in corporate and securities law and participates in the firm’s General Corporate, Securities and Corporate Finance and Merger and Acquisitions/Corporate Governance groups.
Mr. Soden’s practice has included all aspects of corporate finance, corporate governance and regulatory compliance. In addition, he has been active in the non-profit and charitable community for over 30 years serving both as a lawyer and as a member of the governing boards and an officer of numerous charitable and civic organizations.
PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES
Mr. Soden serves as Chairman of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers Oversight Committee. He is a trustee of the Social Law Library and a member of the Massachusetts Access to Justice Commission, the Massachusetts IOLTA Committee and the American Bar Association’s House of Delegates. He will join the Board of Governors of the American Bar Association in August of 2008. He is past President of the Boston Bar Association, Boston Bar Foundation and the Massachusetts Black Lawyers Association and former chairman of the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Bar Services and Activities and its Commission on Lawyers Assistance Programs. He is also a former chairman of the Steering Committee of the Boston Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.
Mr. Soden is a member of the Executive Board of the Northeast Region of the Boy Scouts of America and the High Adventure Sea Base Advisory Board, a member of the Overseers Advisory Board of WGBH and an overseer of the New England Aquarium. He is past chairman of the Boston Municipal Research Bureau and the Board of Trustees of the Judge Baker Children’s Center, past president of United South End Settlements and the Boston Minuteman Council of the BSA and a former trustee of Boston University.
PUBLICATIONS AND PRESENTATIONS
Mr. Soden has participated regularly as a faculty member in legal education programs on corporate finance, corporate governance and mergers and acquisitions and has been a lecturer on Buying and Selling A Company at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He is the author of the chapter on acquisitions in Massachusetts Business Lawyering.
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
Upon graduation from law school, Mr. Soden served as law clerk to the Honorable George C. Edwards Jr. on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. He joined Goodwin Procter as an associate in 1971 and was a partner from 1979 until the fall of 2006, when he became Counsel to the Firm.
BAR AND COURT ADMISSIONS
Mr. Soden is admitted to practice in Massachusetts and before the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts and the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the First and Sixth Circuits.
RECOGNITION
While attending law school, Mr. Soden served as Projects Editor for the Boston University Law Review.