Young Conaway Partner Norman M. Powell Becomes Chair-Elect of The American Bar Association’s Business Law Section

September 16, 2024Press Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

(WILMINGTON, DE) - Young Conaway Stargatt & Taylor, LLP is pleased to announce that partner Norman M. Powell has become Chair-Elect of the American Bar Association’s (ABA) Business Law Section.  He will serve a one-year term before rising to a one-year term as Chair of the more than 30,000 member organization.

“I am honored to assume this role within the ABA,” Mr. Powell said.  “I look forward to partnering with other leaders of the Business Law Section to build on the Section’s core values: serving its members, the profession, and the public by providing educational resources; ensuring ethical and competent representation; and furthering the development and improvement of business law.”  Mr. Powell sums up his vision for the coming year as “re-imagining what is possible for the Section as we continue to serve our members through content generation and other initiatives, striving for the right balance between virtual and in-person meetings.”

For more than 30 years with his combined degrees in law and business, Mr. Powell has handled the unique formation and governance issues that are the hallmark of Delaware corporate and alternative entity law.  He has built his transactional business practice with an emphasis on alternative entities, such as limited liability companies and statutory trusts, and secured transactions.  A special focus of his practice is large and sophisticated financing transactions in which Delaware corporations and other entities make deals under New York (or other) law.  Lead counsel (in New York or elsewhere) handles the deal papers; while Mr. Powell runs the Delaware aspects of the deals, culminating in his delivery of third -party legal opinions to, among others, lenders and relevant nationally recognized statistical rating organizations.

Over the past year, Mr. Powell served as a Senior Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, and Executive Director of the Institute for Law & Economics, a joint initiative of Penn Cary Law, The Wharton School, and the Department of Economics at the University of Pennsylvania.  From 2014 through 2019, Mr. Powell taught secured transactions as an adjunct professor at the Temple University James E. Beasley School of Law. 

Mr. Powell formerly served the Business Law Section as Content Officer (2017-2022), a member of its governing Council (2015-2017), and Chair of its Uniform Commercial Code Committee (2012-2015).  An elected member of the American Law Institute, he is a Fellow and former President (2019-2020) of the American College of Commercial Finance Lawyers.  He was an ABA Advisor to both the Uniform Law Commission Drafting Committee on Special Deposits and its Unincorporated Organization Acts Drafting Committee, and a member of the ABA’s Task Force on Securities Holding Infrastructure.  Mr. Powell is a member of the Permanent Editorial Board for Uniform Commercial Code, the TriBar Opinion Committee, and The Working Group on Legal Opinions Foundation (Board of Directors (2019-2021); Advisory Board (2017-2019 and 2021-present)). 

Mr. Powell earned his bachelor’s degree from Georgetown University and a JD/MBA from Villanova University. He presents to bar associations, trade groups, and law firms, and publishes in a variety of law journals and other periodicals. Mr. Powell is admitted to practice in Delaware, New York, and Pennsylvania.

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Young Conaway Stargatt & Taylor, LLP, one of Delaware's largest law firms, counsels national and international clients handling sophisticated business transactional, advisory and litigation matters involving bankruptcy, intellectual property, corporate and alternative entity law. Young Conaway also guides regional businesses through a myriad of employment, education, real estate, tax, estate planning, environmental, and banking