Kenneth P. Friedman

Ken is the leader of the firm's Business Practice and its Corporate & Securities, Hospitality, and Family Business & Succession Planning Practices. He concentrates his practice in mergers and acquisitions, corporate finance, business planning, nonprofit law, project finance, and securities, and he handles a broad range of general business matters. His clients include a prominent hospitality company with properties around the globe.

Ken has been directly involved in the acquisition, sale, financing, franchising, restructuring, development, and joint venturing of more than 100 hospitality and lodging properties and transactions. He has also represented corporate trustees for more than 30 years on a wide variety of corporate trust, escrow, custodial and indenture trustee transactions, including transactions involving unique assets like music royalties, credit card receivables, and synthetic assets.

Having grown up in a family-owned and operated business, Ken has a unique understanding of and sensitivity to the complex legal, business, and emotional issues involved with family businesses. He has successfully counseled many family businesses (large and small) through both the good and the challenging times in the family business life-cycle, usually resulting in positive benefits for all involved. For example, Ken has represented an internationally known musical performer with respect to family, corporate, intellectual property, and planning issues.

Ken also has significant experience advising clients in connection with raising capital, both debt and equity, for new projects and rehabilitation projects, as well as providing advice to companies facing difficult economic circumstances. He has relationships with traditional and non-traditional sources of capital, both public and private.

Ken’s service to the community has earned him many awards for philanthropy and commitment. He has been the president of several organizations and has held leadership roles in several others. He brings this board and leadership experience to the many nonprofits he counsels on their legal and business issues. He understands that the nonprofit label does not mean that the business and legal issues faced by a nonprofit are any less sophisticated or complicated than those faced by a for-profit business. In many ways, the issues are even more diverse and complex. Ken is very proud of his board service and the perspective he is able to bring to counselling nonprofits on legal issues, business challenges and opportunities, best practices and ethical duties and responsibilities.

Ken exclusively practices U.S. law and is admitted to practice in New York and Pennsylvania. 

• Listed, Best Lawyers in America: Lawyer of the Year (Corporate Law) 2019
• Listed, Upstate New York Super Lawyers, 2007-2018
• Best Lawyers' Buffalo Mergers and Acquisitions Law "Lawyer of the Year," 2014, 2017
• National Federation of Just Communities of Western New York Citation Award, 2013
• Listed, Best Lawyers in America (Corporate Law, Mergers and Acquisitions Law) 2018, 2019
• Listed, Notable Practitioners, Chambers USA, 2016
• Elected to the Society of the Buffalo, 2014
• Order of the Coif
• Former executive editor, University of Pittsburgh Law Review

Ken contributes to Hodgson Russ’s Canada/U.S. cross-border blog, Smarter Way to Cross. His blog entries include:

• Iran Sanctions Eased, But Restrictions Remain
  FEBRUARY 26, 2016

• National Association of Bond Lawyers
• American Bar Association
• New York State Bar Association
• Bar Association of Erie County
• Allegheny County Bar Association (Pennsylvania)

Ken is a member of the board of governors, on the Executive Committee, and secretary of the Shaw Festival; a member of the board of trustees of the Buffalo History Museum (he is a past president of the organization); a member of the board of directors and secretary of the Western New York Technology Development Center, Inc. (Insyte Consulting) and the TDC Foundation, Inc.; a member of the board of directors of the JB Griffin Memorial Foundation; a member of the board of directors of the U.S. Friends of the Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Inc., and an emeritus member of the board of trustees of the National Federation for Just Communities (NFJC, formerly known as the NCCJ). In addition, he continues his activities with Leadership Buffalo and the NFJC, organizations for which he served as president. He formerly served on the boards of the Buffalo Seminary, Temple Beth Zion, the Office of Urban Initiatives, Inc., the Buffalo Alliance for Education, the Friends of the Buffalo Story, Inc., the American Jewish Committee, and the Jewish Community Center of Greater Buffalo. Ken was selected to Buffalo Business First's 40 Under Forty, and he contributed many years of service as chairperson of the Citizens Planning Council as a mayoral appointee.