About
A business lawyer at the technical center of the deal.
Barry J. Bendes is a transactional attorney concentrating on domestic and international corporate, securities, technology, and commercial matters. Over a career that has run, unbroken, for five decades — and that remains on the current edge of the law — he has sat in nearly every chair at the table: outside counsel, public-company general counsel, and law-firm leader.
1971–1989 · Foundations
An economist's eye, trained in the law
A cum laude graduate of Queens College (City University of New York), where he took honors in economics and captained the intercollegiate debating team, Mr. Bendes earned his J.D. from New York University School of Law in 1974. There he served as a Research Editor of the Review of Law & Social Change and published a note on the constitutional limits of presidential impoundment of appropriated funds — an early instance of the instinct that has defined his work: parsing how rules actually bind the parties beneath them. He was admitted in New York in 1975.
He built a corporate and securities practice from the start, becoming a partner at Certilman Haft, where he joined the firm's management committee and served as managing partner of its New York City office. By the early 1980s he was both a practicing deal lawyer and a firm leader — and was already handling sophisticated commercial matters in the federal and state appellate courts.
1989–2006 · The operator
From advising the company to running it
From 1989 to 1992 Mr. Bendes served as General Counsel and Secretary of Emerson Radio Corp., then an approximately $800-million (sales), NYSE-listed consumer-electronics company, and as Senior Vice President–Administration and General Counsel of its software-development and personal-computer subsidiaries. He did not just advise the business; he ran its non-revenue functions — finance, human resources, IT, facilities, third-party manufacturing, legal, and compliance — through the startup, growth, commercialization, and exit phases of its computer ventures. Few transactional lawyers have operated a company from the inside.
He then carried a portable corporate, securities, and technology practice across a series of respected New York and New Jersey firms. In one striking chapter, he briefed and argued federal appeals in the multi-forum brand-license litigation between Orion and Emerson — before both the Seventh and Third Circuits — litigating, at the appellate podium, the very kind of licensing and distribution arrangements he spends his time building.
2006–2024 · The standards-setter
A lawyer's lawyer on the global platform
For nearly two decades Mr. Bendes practiced from a single seat that grew, through three mergers, into the global firm now known as Troutman Pepper Locke — a partner from 2006 to 2024 (through its predecessors Locke Lord, Edwards Wildman, and Edwards Angell Palmer & Dodge) and most recently Counsel. In this period his identity as a "lawyer's lawyer" came fully into focus.
For more than twenty-five years he has chaired the third-party legal-opinions committee of the New Jersey State Bar Association's Business Law Section, chaired the same committee for the in-house bar's Greater New York chapter, and served as a delegate to the national Working Group on Legal Opinions, where he co-chairs the Corporate and Alternate Entity Affinity Group — chairing panels and speaking about third-party legal-opinion matters to other senior business lawyers. He has also led uniform-law and limited-liability-company efforts across two state bars.
Rather than winding down, he became one of the most prolific real-time interpreters of new federal regulation, publishing some three dozen client articles since 2019 — anchored by roughly a dozen on the Corporate Transparency Act and FinCEN beneficial-ownership rules, several issued within days of the rulings they analyzed.
Today · Independent practice
On his own terms
Mr. Bendes now practices independently, offering the full range of his experience to companies, founders, investors, and fellow lawyers: counsel on corporate, securities, and technology transactions; the giving and reviewing of third-party legal opinions; plain-English guidance on fast-moving federal regulation; and service as an arbitrator in commercial, securities, and international disputes. He is recognized by Best Lawyers in America® (Corporate Law, 2023–2026) and has been repeatedly named a New York Super Lawyer.
Explore his practice areas → Education, admissions & recognition →