Ropes & Gray LLP

Litigation

Senior Counsel

John Donovan, a senior counsel in the litigation department, focuses his practice on business litigation, including corporate and securities matters, class actions, disputes in connection with mergers and acquisitions, and other complex business transactions. One of the nation’s premiere litigators, he is an accomplished courtroom advocate and experienced strategist for handling the most difficult, “bet the company” matters. Chambers USA calls him “exceptional,” a “brilliant litigator,” and “one of the best trial lawyers in Massachusetts,” ranks him among less than a half dozen securities litigators in the country labeled “Star Individuals,” and places him in the first band of nationally ranked securities lawyers. His clients include mutual funds complexes, private equity funds, investment banks, and public companies, including their officers and directors. John’s advocacy skills have been demonstrated in a full spectrum of courtroom situations nationwide: injunction proceedings in M&A litigation, dismissal and summary judgment arguments in complex securities, antitrust and commercial cases, bench and jury trials in both commercial cases and even (the rarest of trials) securities class actions. John has also argued dozens of appeals across the nation, in Massachusetts, New York, the Delaware Supreme Court, and the First, Second, Fifth, Seventh, Eighth and Eleventh Circuits. Recently, in what the New York Times labeled a “sweeping legal victory,” he secured a jury verdict for Goldman Sachs after a five-week trial that dismissed all claims by the founders of Dragon Systems about Goldman’s role as financial adviser in the sale of that company. And two years ago, he obtained a 9-0 victory in the United States Supreme Court, establishing the mutual fund industry’s standard for challenges to advisory fees.

French

American Bar Association Boston Bar Association Massachusetts Bar Association

JD, summa cum laude, Boston College Law School, 1981; Order of the Coif; Alumni Prize (class rank); Alpha Sigma Nu (National Jesuit Honor Society); Editor-In-Chief, Boston College Law Review AB, cum laude, Harvard College, 1975