The Eighth Annual Berkeley Spring Forum
on M&A and the Boardroom

Mary Eaton has extensive experience in complex commercial litigation, with a focus on securities class actions, shareholder derivative claims and other complex business disputes. Mary regularly represents issuers, boards of directors, board committees and senior management across a broad spectrum of industries (including technology, financial services, private equity and asset management) in a wide variety of disputes in federal and state courts across the country. In addition to her substantial trial experience, Mary regularly counsels clients on litigation avoidance and corporate governance matters. Among her many accolades, Mary is perennially ranked among leading litigators by Chambers USA, Benchmark Litigation, Lawdragon, Crain’s New York Business, Legal 500 US and Best Lawyers in America. In 2019, the American Bar Association awarded Mary the Stonewall Award for her contributions to the advancement of LGBT individuals and issues.

Ethan Klingsberg, as co-head of Freshfields’ US Corporate and M&A group, has a practice that focuses on public company boards of directors, corporate law, M&A and SEC matters. He leads a spectrum of strategic projects for clients in the Bay Area, many of whom have been working continuously with Ethan for over two decades. Indeed, he co-founded the Berkeley Law Spring Forum on M&A and the Boardroom eleven years ago, and continues to curate this event, to ensure these clients receive the most up to date insights and value-additive information available. Ranked Band 1 for Corporate/M&A by both Chambers USA and Chambers Global, Ethan has received the Burton Award for Legal Achievement for writing on fiduciary duties, was named a “top 10 innovative lawyer” for North America by the Financial Times, has been elected by peers at other firms to be a Fellow of the American College of Governance Counsel, and named a “BTI Client Service All-Star” based on the survey of general counsels of the Fortune 1000, a Law360 M&A “MVP,” a “Legend” by Lawdragon, and “Dealmaker of the Year” by the American Lawyer. A regular guest on BloombergTV and CNBC to discuss M&A, governance, shareholder activism, the SEC, and board processes, his essays on corporate law topics have appeared in The Financial Times, Reuters Breaking Views, MarketWatch, The New York Law Journal, and the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance. He is grateful to the amazing teams at Berkeley and Freshfields that make this event a stand-out.

Professor of Law, University of California, Berkeley Frank Partnoy is the Adrian A. Kragen Professor Law at the UC Berkeley School of Law and Affiliated Faculty at the Berkeley Haas School of Business and the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing. He has written several books, dozens of scholarly articles, and more than fifty opinion pieces in The New York Times and the Financial Times. Partnoy has appeared on 60 Minutes and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and has testified before both houses of Congress. He has been an international research fellow at Oxford since 2010, and is a graduate of Yale Law School.

The Honorable Lori W. Will was sworn in as a Vice Chancellor of the Court of Chancery in May 2021.

She was previously a partner at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, P.C. and a senior associate at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP. She served as a law clerk to then-Vice Chancellor Leo E. Strine, Jr.

Vice Chancellor Will received her B.A. summa cum laude in both History and Government & Law from Lafayette College, her J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and a graduate Certificate in Business and Public Policy from the Wharton School. She is a member of the American Law Institute and the American Bar Association.

Vice Chancellor Will is an Adjunct Professor of Law at NYU School of Law and at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. She is also a Lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School and a Visiting Professor at the The University of California, Berkeley, School of Law.