Jack A. Gordon is a Partner at McLaughlin & Stern and leads the firm’s Hospitality Practice. An experienced trial lawyer, he represents businesses and individuals in complex commercial litigation, employment disputes and intellectual property matters across a wide range of industries.

For almost three decades, Jack was the Managing Partner of Kent, Beatty & Gordon LLP, which recently joined McLaughlin & Stern. Before entering private practice on his own and later joining Michael Kent and Harry Beatty in 1997, he spent more than eight years as a litigator at a major international law firm.

Jack has tried significant commercial cases in state and federal courts and handled matters involving corporate disputes, intellectual property, alleged antitrust violations, business dissolutions, employee benefits and endorsement agreements. His representative results include obtaining a judgment piercing the corporate veil and imposing personal liability for more than $20 million in corporate debt; securing the dismissal of a federal civil RICO action seeking more than $1 billion in damages, later affirmed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit; and helping secure a unanimous federal jury verdict worth more than $26 million in a television airtime contract dispute.

Jack’s employment practice includes advising corporations, financial institutions and senior executives on compensation, employment agreements, internal investigations and disputes involving departing executives. He also counsels clients on restrictive covenants and has litigated requests for emergency injunctive relief.

As head of the firm’s Hospitality Practice, Jack advises investors, restaurants, wine bars, nightclubs, and beer, wine and spirits businesses on their corporate structuring issues, litigation, employment, and operational needs. He has lectured at the Institute of Culinary Education since 2010 on the legal aspects of opening and operating restaurants and wine bars, taught hospitality-related continuing legal education programs, and served as a guest lecturer for Columbia University MBA students studying food entrepreneurship. He is Chairman Emeritus of the New York City Bar Association’s Hospitality Law Committee and a Fellow of The Culinary Institute of America.  He is also the President of the Wine & Food Society of New York, and an active member of several of the City’s other wine and food societies.

Jack is a member of the New York State Bar Association, the American Bar Association and the New York City Bar Association. He has been rated AV by Martindale-Hubbell for almost twenty years, and has been recognized by New York Metro Super Lawyers and other legal publications for his litigation acumen.