Jo Ann Jorge Bio

Jo Ann represents early-stage, closely held, small and mid-sized companies as well as individuals, focusing her practice on providing business and employment law advice and counsel on matters including contracts, technology-related issues, corporate governance concerns, equity transactions and structuring, corporate and employment compliance, as well as disputes. Jo Ann serves as outside general counsel and as local counsel to corporations.

She has substantial experience in the technology, service, manufacturing, and medical device industries. drafting, reviewing. and advising on a wide variety of commercial agreements. including professional service, technology transfer, vendor and master service agreements, and corporate governance documents, including buy-sell, operating, stockholder, and voting agreements. Jo Ann has represented corporations and individuals in the effective negotiation and drafting of executive employment agreements, technology ownership agreements, technology licensing agreements, confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements, non-circumvention agreements, and non-competition agreements.

Among the legal services that Jo Ann handles is a wide variety of corporate transactions, including mergers, acquisitions, strategic partnerships/collaborations, licensing arrangements, private placement/private equity, and venture/early-stage financings.  Jo Ann has represented pre-revenue to mid-sized companies through acquisition by publicly traded companies and represented technology and service companies in the acquisition of vendor corporations.

Jo Ann provides preventive day-to-day counseling and training to clients on a wide range of corporate compliance and employment issues and manages business litigation and arbitration matters efficiently and effectively, handling a wide variety of business and employment disputes, including breach of contract, Wage Act violations, breach of fiduciary duties, intentional interference with business relations, consumer protection statutes, deceit/misrepresentation, trade secret misappropriation, civil conspiracy, covenants of good faith and fair dealing, and promissory estoppel.

Jo Ann has worked with entrepreneurs and start-up, early-stage, small and mid-sized companies for many years, starting with her work as an associate in the Corporate Group of Pepe & Hazard (merged with McElroy, Deutsch, Mulvaney & Carpenter, LLP), where she worked on technology transfers, licensing, mergers, and acquisitions of all sizes from inception through closing, including due diligence and drafting/negotiating terms of licensing agreements, asset purchase, and stock purchase agreements. Jo Ann subsequently worked as a Consultant with State Street Business Group, where she initiated contact to identify and qualify potential partners for client companies and negotiated terms of strategic partnerships to accelerate growth. And then in-house with a medical device venture-backed start-up (Biofertec, Ltd.) where she developed close working relationships with hospitals negotiating and finalizing agreements with individual physicians to become early-adopters of the technology and where she conducted presentations to more than 40 venture capital companies, successfully obtaining investment and negotiating the terms of the transaction. Her concentration of experience is in the technology, manufacturing, medical device, and service industries.

Jo Ann is a graduate of Amherst College (B.A. Economics, ’87) and studied through the INSTEP program with professors from London School of Economics. Jo Ann was one of twenty-five college students chosen for a Massachusetts State Senate internship program. She is a graduate of Suffolk University Law School (J.D. ’90), where she was a moot court finalist.  She is admitted to the state and federal courts of Massachusetts and Connecticut and has been admitted pro hac vice on several other cases to several other jurisdictions.

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