Jacqueline A. Brooks
Partner – Duane Morris
Description of field of expertise
Jacqueline Brooks is a corporate attorney who represents clients in transactions that have the potential to transform their businesses. Jacqueline concentrates her practice in business and commercial law, counseling clients in mergers and acquisitions, commercial finance, private offerings of debt and equity securities, corporate and REIT governance and shareholder derivative and dispute matters, including special committee considerations. She has experience representing public companies, privately owned and managed companies, nonprofit organizations and startup companies and provides counsel to these organizations regarding corporate matters.
Jacqueline contributes to thought leadership in business law in various ways, including being an annual contributing author to the American Bar Association’s Recent Developments in Business Courts annual publication, a contributing author to the “Annual Survey of Judicial Developments Pertaining to Private Equity and Venture Capital,” in The Business Lawyer (February 2024), and a co-editor of the Maryland Corporate Practice and Forms published by Data Trace.
Jacqueline was also recently honored by The Daily Record and included in a group of 24 professionals selected for their 2024 Business Law Power list as well as their 2024 Leaders in Law list. She was also included in The Daily Record’s “Top 100 Women” in 2020. Ms. Brooks was recognized by Chambers USA: America’s Leading Lawyers for Business in 2023 for Corporate/M&A. Chambers USA cited client sources report that “Ms. Brooks is very practical, focused on solutions and gets what needs to be done.”
What advice would you offer to new attorneys interested in your field?
I would encourage new attorneys interested in becoming a corporate lawyer to (1) understand that transactional attorneys, like litigators, need to be zealous advocates for their clients in transactions and that requires understanding the client’s business, strategy and priority of goals; (2) approach your practice and growth of your skills with an entrepreneurial mindset, focused on continued improvement of your knowledge base and experience, including taking on assignments that may stretch and working on as many aspects of a transaction as possible; and (3) take the opportunity to get involved and stay involved with organizations such as the NBA Commercial Law Section, American Bar Association Business Section and local bar associations as it will provide continuing legal education to keep you updated on what’s happening in your field, provides great networking for referrals, mentors, mentees and profile building.