Biography

For over 30 years, Jim O’Sullivan has guided businesses and their owners through their most important stages: from business formation to succession planning and sale transactions, including negotiating and preparing agreements to strategically grow and protect the business, as well as resolving disputes among the owners. Working closely with business owners and collaborating with their other trusted advisors, Jim provides practical, experience-tested solutions in meeting their toughest legal challenges and seizing valuable business opportunities.

In addition to calling on Jim for day-to-day legal advice, Jim’s clients rely on him for his effective legal skill in:

• Succession planning for family businesses and other private companies
• Business sales and purchases (“M&A”), joint ventures and recapitalization strategies
• Management and buy/sell agreements among owners
• “Business divorce” among owners and related fiduciary duties
• Formation of LLCs and corporations
• Negotiating, drafting and analyzing contracts with customers and vendors
• Regulatory compliance with business growth programs sponsored by the Small Business Administration and other federal, state and local agencies.

In addition to his strong reputation for advising businesses in general, Jim is also widely known for his experience in representing professional service entities, including medical, legal and accounting firms.

Jim’s commitment to bringing high quality cost-effective advice to entrepreneurs led him to create and chair “Honey, I Shrunk the Documents,” a 2017 seminar co-sponsored by the State Bar of Arizona, the Arizona Society of CPAs (ASCPA), and the Alliance of Merger & Acquisition Advisors (AM&AA). Jim is a member of the American Bar Association’s Mergers & Acquisitions and Middle Market and Small Business Committees and is actively serving on their Joint Task Force to create a short-form agreement for sales of privately-owned businesses. He also received the 2016 Champions Award from the M&A Source and is a member of the AM&AA.

Listed since 2013 in The Best Lawyers in America for Closely Held Companies and Family Business Law, Jim was one of the drafters of the revised Arizona corporate statutes and is a co-author of Arizona Corporate Practice, a two-volume treatise for attorneys which continues in publication by Thomson Reuters for over 20 years.

Jim is very involved in the Arizona business and professional community. He received the State Bar of Arizona’s 2019 Diversity and Inclusion Leadership Award and 2013 Continuing Education Award. Jim serves on the Arizona Bar’s Mentoring Committee and the Bar Leadership Institute Selection Committee. He earned his law degree from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, and a B.S. from the University of Southern California.

Articles

Jim O’Sullivan Shares Leadership Experiences in Arizona Continuing Legal Education Course
http://www.tblaw.com/jim-osullivan-leadership-arizona-cle/