• Follow I-95 South to US-1 South via Exit 46 toward Boston
• Take exit 37A to merge onto I-93 S / US-1 S
• Take Exit 20A toward South Station and keep right on 20A
• Turn RIGHT at next light onto Summer Street
• Turn RIGHT at first intersection onto High Street; public parking available at 150 Federal on left

• Merge onto I-95 North to I-93 North
• Merge onto I-93 N / US-1 North via Exit 12 toward Boston
• Take Exit 20 towards South Station/I-90 W/Worcester
• Follow signs for Chinatown/South Station
• Turn RIGHT at Kneeland Street
• Kneeland Street turns LEFT and becomes Atlantic Avenue
• Turn LEFT at Summer Street
• Turn RIGHT at High Street
• Turn LEFT at Federal Street
• End at 160 Federal Street

• Start out on Atlantic Avenue (0.1 miles)
• Go LEFT onto Summer Street (0.1 miles)
• Turn RIGHT onto High Street (0.1 miles)
• Turn LEFT onto Federal Street (0.1 miles)
• End at 160 Federal Street, Boston, MA 02110

• Start out on Causeway Street (0.1 miles)
• Cross Causeway Street to Friend Street (0.1 miles)
• Go straight on Friend Street (0.2 miles)
• The end of Friend Street intersects w/ Congress Street (0.1 miles)
• Take a LEFT onto Congress Street (0.1 miles)
• Go straight on Congress Street (0.7 miles)
• Take a RIGHT onto Franklin Street (0.1 miles)
• Take a LEFT onto Federal Street (0.2 miles)
• End at 160 Federal Street, Boston, MA 02110

The Retail Financial Services Practice Group provides transactional, regulatory, compliance, operations, and dispute resolution services to lenders, deposit takers, non-deposit investment providers, and insurance producers.  We also serve vendors who support these types of retail financial service companies (e.g., software companies and loan servicers).  Our clients include local, regional and national financial institutions (including national banks, federal savings banks, federal credit unions, and state-chartered banks, credit unions and industrial loan companies), bank holding companies, credit card companies, nonbank lenders (including mortgage companies, auto finance companies and education loan providers), payroll companies, insurance producers, and bank-affiliated broker/dealers.  We provide both complete state law advice, focusing on Maine, Massachusetts and New Hampshire, and national guidance on both federal law and (as coordinating counsel) other state law matters. 

Our core business is consumer lending, including all aspects of origination or acquisition, maintenance and disposition of consumer assets.  We also deal in nonconsumer retail financial services products, such as business credit cards and commercial cash management and Internet banking services.  The common thread of our marketplace is a regulated service provider delivering a financial service in repeated transactions that must be standardized to be profitable – and (in the case of resulting assets) in order to be saleable in a secondary market.

We help clients succeed by protecting and enforcing their valuable intellectual property rights.

Our Intellectual Property Group deals with all the legal issues relating to patents, trademarks, copyrights and trade secrets. Our clients are big and small, from Fortune 500 companies to brand new start-ups. We handle work on the cutting edge of software, the life sciences, advanced materials processing and high-tech manufacturing.

Clients turn to us for:

Leading academic institutions and biotech companies through-out the United States and abroad, have selected Pierce Atwood to perform their patent, licensing and litigation work. Whether your intellectual property results from work in the area of embryonic stem cell and cloning technology, immunology, medical devices or other work in the life sciences, and whether your needs involve advice concerning a sponsored research or collaboration agreement, or a complex licensing transaction or freedom to operate analysis, to everything in between, Pierce Atwood’s biotech team has the technical expertise and the experience and legal resources to help you. Pierce Atwood biotech team professionals provide advice and strategic counseling to biotech clients on complex licensing transactions, sponsored research, research collaboration and material transfer agreements, as well as advice and counsel on general commercial and transactional work, mergers and acquisitions, complex financing transactions and securities matters. Our biotechnology patent litigation attorneys have represented both inventors and alleged infringers in patent jury trials and have experience with cutting-edge patent matters involving technologies such as chemical compositions, embryonic stem cell and cloning technology. Our biotechnology patent professionals have prosecuted hundreds of patent applications directed toward diagnostic and therapeutic inventions, compositions and methods relating to gene therapy; novel proteins, peptides and nucleic acids; drug delivery compositions and methods; novel nucleic acid regulatory sequences; compositions and methods for modulating the immune response; techniques for the analysis of nucleic acids, and animal models for disease including transgenic and knockout models, and we also have research experience in a wide array of disciplines, including molecular biology, neurobiology, cell biology, biophysics, biochemistry, genetics and chemical synthesis.

We advise writers, producers, directors, and talent in connection with motion pictures, television, and multi-media ventures and contracting matters.  With almost 10 years of experience in the entertainment law arena in Beverly Hills, California, we bring experience and expertise unique in our region to this practice area.  Representative matters include:       

• Representation of an award winning documentary film maker
• Production attorney for independently financed motion pictures
• Representation of producers in connection with the optioning of literary material
• Representation of screenwriters in connection with both work for hire and option negotiations
• Negotiation of film distribution deals

Pierce Atwood LLP’s Litigation Group is the largest practice in the firm. The group has been recognized as the premier complex commercial litigation practice in Maine by Chambers and Partners, an independent British legal researcher and publisher of global legal guides. In addition, Group Chair Jeffrey M. White and partners John J. Aromando, Peter W. Culley, William J. Kayatta, Jr. and Robert H. Stier, Jr. are rated as leading litigation attorneys in Chambers USA: America’s Leading Lawyers for Business, 2007. Fourteen attorneys in the department also have achieved recognition in Woodward/White’s The Best Lawyers in America, 2008 edition.

The Litigation Group handles litigation both within the state of Maine and across the country. The firm has been lead counsel in many cases of national significance in Maine and elsewhere. For example, we recently represented the State of California in the renegotiation and litigation of power contracts having a total value in excess of $43 billion.

We represent plaintiffs and defendants in matters ranging from personal injury actions to complex commercial, corporate, intellectual property, environmental and antitrust litigation. We represent the insureds of several insurance carriers in personal injury matters and products liability claims, and insurers in insurance coverage and health and disability matters. The Litigation Group is extensively involved in employment discrimination litigation.

Our commercial and corporate litigation practice includes directors and officers liability actions, shareholder and securities litigation, contracts and UCC litigation, consumer rights, ERISA, class actions, and bankruptcy matters. The firm has participated in almost every contested corporate takeover involving publicly held corporations domiciled in the state of Maine, whether the litigation has arisen under proxy rules, the Williams Act, state takeover laws or related claims involving breach of fiduciary duties by directors. We have a group experienced in white collar criminal defense and corporate investigations and maintain a very active construction claims and surety practice.

In the Intellectual Property area, our lawyers have extensive experience with trademark and tradename, Internet domain name, copyright and patent infringement, misappropriation, trade secret, and computer and technology litigation.

Trial lawyers at Pierce Atwood regularly appear as lecturers and panelists in continuing education programs at the local, regional, and national level. Lawyers in the Group include the two most recent Chief Justices of Maine’s highest court and a past President of the American College of Trial Lawyers.

Most people, regardless of the extent of their assets, are concerned with developing a plan that will transfer their property at death. In fact, the development of such a plan is crucial to most families' long-term financial security.

Clients come to us for the full spectrum of trust and estate issues including:

• Estate planning including: estate plans, wills, trusts, durable powers of attorney, advance health care directives
• Sophisticated estate and gift planning strategies including: family limited partnerships, charitable lead and charitable remainder trusts, life insurance trusts, grantor retained annuity and unitrusts, qualified personal residence trusts and land conservation easements
• Business succession planning
• Tax planning, including charitable giving and tax-exempt organizations
• Administration of decedents' trusts and estates, including advising executors, personal representatives, and trustees, and by serving in those capacities directly
• Probate litigation

Our attorneys are skilled at working with individuals and families, and our dedicated staff of paralegals assists us in delivering our services in a cost-effective manner.

Clients generally develop a working relationship with one attorney, who becomes closely familiar with your personal situation. Our attorneys, however, are not a collection of sole practitioners. We regularly collaborate with one another to produce the best result for our clients. In that process, we draw on each other's knowledge and experience, derived over many years of practice, in addressing complex, novel or challenging matters for our clients.

Where appropriate, we also work with lawyers from other practice areas when their expertise is relevant. Some frequent examples of this involve work with our federal tax attorneys, joint efforts with the corporate group in business succession matters, and co-counseling in contested probate matters with members of our litigation group. When you engage Pierce Atwood for trust and estate services, you can be assured that the full resources of the firm will be available to provide whatever assistance is needed with respect to your legal matter.