Jim Black is a lawyer and partner at Acceleron Law Group based in Washington DC (USA). He has over two decades of experience advising companies on all types of strategic transactions.
Many of Jim’s clients are privately held companies from German-speaking countries, including family-owned businesses from the German and Austrian Mittelstand, as well as their US subsidiaries. Jim frequently advises his clients on mergers and acquisitions, corporate restructurings, general corporate matters, and a wide range of issues relating to clients’ entry into the U.S. market. Market entry advice may include corporate formation and structuring, M&A, joint ventures and other strategic alliances, corporate governance, commercial contracts, and various practical matters relating to the commencement and growth of business operations in the United States. Drawing on his many years of experience, Jim constantly strives to provide his clients with practical, cost-effective and value-adding advice and support.
Jim is a regular speaker and author on domestic and cross-border emerging legal topics, including, co-authoring an article for the American Bar Association’s Business Law Today “Cannabis Banking: Proceed with Caution”, and speaking on a panel involving representatives from Andersen Tax & Legal, AmCham Germany and AmerikaHaus NordrheinWestfalen on the topic of U.S. and German legislative efforts for helping maintain transatlantic business during the Covid-19 pandemic crisis.
Jim is co-chair of the International Expansion and Cross-Border Transactions subcommittee of the American Bar Association’s Middle Market and Small Business Committee. He is also an active member of the ABA’s M&A Committee and a participant in several ABA working groups focusing on M&A-related issues. He is a member of the American Council on Germany, the American Constitution Society, and the International Cannabis Bar Association.
Jim devotes a substantial amount of time to advising pro bono clients, including the American Academy in Berlin, Human Rights Campaign and the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project. Jim speaks fluent German and regularly advises clients, publishes articles, and presents at speaking engagements in German.
Before joining Acceleron, Jim was Of Counsel in the Washington, D.C. office of Morrison & Foerster LLP and, prior to that, was a partner at White & Case LLP, where he was based in Frankfurt, Germany and headed the firm’s US corporate and M&A practice in Germany. He spent roughly 10 years in Frankfurt and also worked in Berlin for a year following law school, where he advised on privatization transactions for the German Federal Ministry of Finance as a Robert Bosch Fellow. Jim also gained valuable experience before moving to Frankfurt while working as an associate and Counsel in the Washington, D.C. offices of Clifford Chance LLP and Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP.
Jim earned his J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law and his master’s degree in German literature from the University of Virginia Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. In addition to receiving the Robert Bosch Fellowship, Jim was awarded a Fulbright/DAAD scholarship and a Rotary International scholarship, and he studied at the Universities of Erlangen and Regensburg, Germany. Jim graduated cum laude with honors from Southern Illinois University, where he studied German and journalism. After college, Jim taught English and worked as a freelance journalist in Prague and Sumperk, Moravia, arriving in the country shortly following Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Revolution.
In his free time, when he is not spending time with his teenage children, Jim likes to run half marathons, hike, bike and explore the many outdoor possibilities in the Washington, D.C. area.
