Tom Fitzpatrick learned how to be a business lawyer at the Chicago firm of Sonnenschein, where he became a partner in 1983.  In 1987, Tom left Sonnenschein to begin what has become FLO Counsel. 

Tom represented his first venture capital investor syndicate in 1979, in an investment in the then-new technology of computer hard drives. Since then, Tom has worked with start-ups and growth companies, and their investors, throughout the United States, in dozens of investments at all stages, from seed capital to IPO exits (for successful investments), and portfolio workouts (for some less successful ones).

Between 1987 and 1994, Tom represented the University of Chicago's path-breaking business development subsidiary, ARCH Development Corporation. At a time when universities were just beginning to explore technology licensing, ARCH raised its own venture fund, started a variety of new ventures, and developed a broad patent licensing portfolio. Tom advised the University, the venture company, and many of its start-ups, taking one of them public, selling another to one of the country's largest media ventures, and closing out some less-successful ventures. Tom concluded his work at ARCH by serving as acting president in 1994.

More recently, Tom has extensive experience in counseling academic professionals in transition from one institution to another, and in other legal matters that crop up in the lives of professors and research scientists.

Alongside his work as a lawyer, Tom has an active history starting and investing in new ventures. He currently leads a start-up in medical imaging information management tools, and works with a group of start-up sponsors in data authentication and digital identity. For seven years beginning in 2006, Tom was a director of FreightCar America, Inc. (Nasdaq:RAIL), a railroad freight car manufacturer. For most of that time, Tom was the chairman of the RAIL board.

Tom has provided counsel, both as a lawyer and as a businessman, for a variety of turn-arounds, including responsibility (2003-2004) for the re-organization of a drug development company based in the US and Taiwan. He represented a group of French and American scientists in forming a bi-continental biotech start-up in sleep medicine, and has experience in business and investment transactions in Brazil, western Europe and east Asia. He has lectured on start-ups and venture capital financing in Chicago and in China.

Tom has extensive experience with both the legal issues and the cultural context for business people in China and Taiwan who want to do business in the US, and business people in the US who want to do business in China.

Tom is a graduate of Yale College (B.A. 1973) and New York University Law School (J.D. 1976), and was formerly an instructor at the University of Chicago Law School. He is a member of the Illinois bar.