About Pat Jones

Pat graduated from Wake Forest in 1973 with a major in Accounting, where he played varsity baseball and was a co-captain his senior year. The highlight of Pat’s athletic career was hitting a home run in the first ever ACC Baseball Tournament off Tim Stoddard, the only man in history to have earned NCAA Championship and World Series rings as a player. (He was a starting forward on David Thompson’s 1973-74 NCAA Champion NC State team and a member of the 1983 World Champion Baltimore Orioles.) It’s a pretty safe bet that was the low point of Tim Stoddard’s athletic career.

After graduation Pat spent three years with Price Waterhouse in Atlanta (where he worked in both the audit and tax departments and obtained his CPA certificate), followed by three years at Emory University School of Law, graduating in 1979. He spent the next 17 years in private practice with three law firms in Atlanta (10 with Kilpatrick & Cody (n/k/a Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton); 4 with Long, Aldridge & Norman (n/k/a Dentons); and 3 with Nelson, Mullins, Riley & Scarborough), where he practiced in the corporate and tax areas. During those 17 years in private practice Pat was, among other things:

• the Co-Chair of the Georgia Limited Liability Company Committee that drafted the Georgia Limited Liability Company Act, and the co-author of the Georgia LLC/LLP Handbook;
• the Editor-in- Chief of The Atlanta Lawyer;
• the Chair of the Tax Law Section of the Atlanta Bar Association;
• and lead tax counsel in two significant tax cases:
  • Childs, et al. v. Commissioner, 103 T.C. 634 (1994), aff’d, 89 F.3d 856 (11th Cir. 1996), which involved structured attorneys’ fees, and which has been described as the “mother of all cases” in the structured settlement area; and
  • Ithaca Industries, Inc. v. Commissioner, 97 T.C 253 (1991), aff’d, 17 F.3d 684, cert. denied, 513 U.S. 831 (1994), which involved the amortization of an assembled workforce.

Starting in November 1995, Pat spent eight years with a public technology company, PTEK Holdings (known as Premiere Global Services [NYSE: PGI] when it was acquired by Siris Capital Group in December 2015), where he was the General Counsel all eight years, the CFO for almost four of those years, and for the first two years he was also the head of investor relations (which he will tell you without hesitation was the worst job he has ever had). During his tenure as General Counsel Pat was involved in over 100 merger and acquisition (“M&A”) transactions, and settled several significant patent infringement and employment cases through negotiation. In addition, he became intimately familiar with alternative dispute resolution (“ADR”) as a result of 25 shareholder lawsuits that were filed in 1998 against PTEK, its directors and certain executive officers (including Pat in his capacity as CFO), after two of PTEK’s biggest customers went under within weeks of each other. Twenty-four of those cases were settled through mediation.

After Pat left PTEK in September 2003 he spent some time contemplating life before becoming a full time mediator and arbitrator in the Fall of 2004 with Henning Mediation & Arbitration Service, Inc. in Atlanta https://www.henningmediation.com/bio-jones.php, where he specializes in commercial and business disputes, such as:

• contract disputes;
• shareholder lawsuits and other securities claims;
• business divorces;
• corporate governance matters;
• valuation issues;
• M&A transaction disputes, including post-closing indemnification claims and purchase price adjustments;
• estate and probate disputes, and other fiduciary matters;
• noncompete, severance and other employment disputes;
• patent and trademark matters;
• intellectual property and other technology matters;
• franchise disputes;
• real estate matters;
• accounting malpractice;
• estate and probate disputes; and
• income, gift and estate tax matters.

Also, because of Pat’s accounting, finance, tax and business experience, he has developed a sort of subspecialty in accounting malpractice disputes, and he is one of only a handful of people in the Southeast who has served as a Non-IRS Co-Mediator at the IRS Appeals level.

Pat’s background has proved to be particularly beneficial in handling pre-litigation business controversies, such as those involving shareholder disagreements, corporate governance matters, business divorces, valuation issues, and post-closing purchase price adjustments. In this regard, Pat served as an ADR consultant in an arbitration involving a post-closing purchase price adjustment following the sale of a company for more than $100,000,000.

During Pat’s 30+ years in private practice he has gained a significant amount of experience representing both companies and senior executives in their employment arrangements (e.g., employment agreements, noncompete and nondisclosure agreements, stock option and restricted stock agreements, and separation agreements), and for the eight years when he was General Counsel of PTEK he negotiated all the senior executives’ employment agreements, stock option agreements, restricted stock agreements and separation agreements. While Pat is not what you would think of as a traditional employment lawyer, this experience has been very helpful to him in his ADR practice, where he has successfully mediated a number of cases involving disputes between senior executives and their employers.

Pat is a founding member of the Georgia Academy of Mediators & Arbitrators (https://www.georgiamediators.org/patrick-jones); a member of The National Academy of Distinguished Neutrals (http://www.nadn.org/patrick-jones); a former Associate of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (http://www.ciarb.org/); a Registered Neutral with the Georgia Office of Dispute Resolution (General Mediation and Arbitration); and a FINRA (formerly NASD) arbitrator.

In March 2007 (and with numerous college tuition obligations looming on the horizon) Pat returned to practicing law when he joined Friend, Hudak & Harris (http://www.fh2.com/our-team/patrick-jones/), a small telecommunications/technology firm that was PTEK’s primary outside telecom counsel, where he again practices in the corporate and tax areas. Pat now splits his time between his ADR and law practices.

Notwithstanding his 11+ years away from private practice, Pat has received a Martindale AV® Preeminent Peer Review rating every year since 1990.

For more than 15 years Pat served as the Chair of the Audit Committee and as a member of the Compensation Committee of a private technology company, until its sale in April 2016 for $475 million. He also served on the board of directors of another private technology company, and as an advisor to the board of directors of a private manufacturing company.

Pat is a member of the Board of Directors and a former Chair of Cancer Support Community – Atlanta, Inc. (www.cscatlanta.org), which was formerly known as The Wellness Community-Atlanta Northside prior to the merger of The Wellness Community and Gilda’s Club Worldwide. As a result of the Gilda’s Club merger, Cancer Support Community is now the largest provider of psychosocial cancer support in North America. Pat has also served on the boards of several other nonprofit organizations.

In summary, having practiced corporate and tax law for over 30 years (with significant litigation experience), been a CPA with a Big Eight accounting firm, and the General Counsel and CFO of a public company (not to mention the head of investor relations), Pat brings a unique perspective and meaningful experience to the mediation and arbitration table in commercial and business disputes.