Tom Fitzpatrick is the principal of FLO Counsel. If a project calls for expertise outside Tom’s areas of competence or elsewhere in the world, he draws on suitable outside counsel, with many of whom he has worked successfully for years.
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).
In the early days of university-based venture capital in the US, Tom advised the University of Chicago and its path-breaking subsidiary, ARCH Development Corporation, in exploring technology licensing, raising a captive venture fund, and starting a variety of new ventures. Tom ultimately served in 1994 as acting president of ARCH Development, helping ARCH transition leadership teams.
More recently, Tom has extensive experience counseling academic professionals on moving 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 is now a principal of AshlandV Partners (ashlandv.com), and is a co-founder or director of several initiatives supported by AshlandV.
Tom is an experienced board director and board chair for public and private companies. He has also 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.