Powered by LawFuel – JENNIFER PASTARNACK JOINS SULLIVAN IN NEW YORK TO HEAD THE FIRM’S GLOBAL DEBT AND CLAIMS TRADING PRACTICE
New York City and Boston, February 4, 2020 – International law firm Sullivan & Worcester announced today that Jennifer Pastarnack has joined the firm as a partner to lead its firmwide Global Debt and Claims Trading practice in New York, expanding Sullivan’s offerings of corporate, bankruptcy and restructuring services in the United States and in London.
“At Sullivan, client relationships are at the core of our success. Jennifer brings that same client-focused, value-driven mentality to her practice. She has tremendous experience in a specialized area of the markets our domestic and international clients are interested in,” said Joel Carpenter, managing partner of the firm. “She is a great fit and we’re pleased that she’s chosen Sullivan as her new professional home.”
Pastarnack works with hedge funds, investment banks and asset managers in trading the debt of financially distressed companies in domestic and cross-border transactions in the secondary market. She is well-versed in all aspects of the investment life cycle for claim trades including diligence reviews, claim evaluation and structuring, and has provided counsel on a broad mix of complex regulatory, legal and commercial matters, including U.S. federal securities laws. She joins Sullivan from Clifford Chance, prior to that she was with Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel.
“Sullivan has the dynamic platform I wanted for the next stage of my career,” Pastarnack said. “The firm has outstanding legal talent, is an entrepreneurial, forward-thinking organization, and recognizes the importance of investing in technology to better serve our clients.”
Sullivan is a member of the Loan Syndications and Trading Association, Inc., the trade association for the U.S. debt industry, and the Loan Market Association, the trade association for the European debt trading industry. Pastarnack will be working closely the firm’s Chambers-ranked Bankruptcy & Restructuring group.
“Jennifer is an excellent lawyer whose experience in the debt and claims trading area is unique among our peers and will allow us to expand the services we provide to our existing fund and bankruptcy clients,” said Jeffrey Gleit, head of the Bankruptcy & Restructuring group.
As a pro bono advocate, Pastarnack successfully co-represented a client in a Special Immigration Juvenile Status immigration case in Brooklyn Family Court. In October 2019, she published an article in the New York Law Journal entitled “Bankruptcy Trade Claim Market: The Dangers of Claim Trading Platforms and Automated Contracts” and was featured in a lengthy Corporate Counsel Business Journal article in May, 2019, that shared Jennifer’s unique approach to client relationships and business generation. Pastarnack earned her J.D. cum laude at New York Law School and received her B.S. from Cornell University in Labor and Industrial Relations.
About Sullivan
Sullivan & Worcester (Sullivan) is a leading AmLaw 200 law firm. With over 200 attorneys in Boston, London, New York, Tel Aviv and Washington, DC, they guide organizations that are rewriting the rules. Sullivan’s clients, including Fortune 500 companies and emerging businesses, rely on Sullivan’s strategic vision, comfort with complexity and intense focus on results. ZAG / Sullivan & Worcester (formerly ZAG-S&W) — a joint venture between Israel-based Zysman, Aharoni, Gayer & Co. and Sullivan & Worcester LLP — provides counsel to Israel-based companies and U.S. companies with Israeli interests on a variety of legal matters including access to capital markets, international tech IPOs, mergers and acquisitions, and tax. For more information please visit sullivanlaw.com.
Recent LawFuel Headlines
- The OpenAI Defense: Inside the Wachtell Trial Team That Just Beat Elon MuskWhile Elon Musk’s legal team tried to transform a federal courtroom in Oakland, California into an existential debate about the fate of human civilization and a “stolen charity,” Sam Altman’s defenders quietly built a procedural guillotine. A unanimous nine-member federal advisory jury took less than two hours to reject all of Musk’s claims against OpenAI, CEO Sam Altman, and President Greg Brockman, which presumably was both surprising and disappointing for the multi-billionaire. U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers immediately adopted the verdict from the bench, dismissing the case in full. The same statute-of-limitations finding wiped out Musk’s aiding-and-abetting claim against Microsoft, an early backer of OpenAI’s for-profit arm. Log in to the the lawyer profiles . . .
- The $8 Billion Fight That Shows Why Litigation Is Still the City’s Ultimate Blood SportA monster battle is unfolding in the sprawling claim against audit powerhouse PwC, born from the spectacular implosion of Chinese property behemoth China Evergrande, the most indebted property group in the world. Senior silks like Richard Handyside KC, the Fountain Court Chambers’ Head, are facing off against those from 3 Verulam Buildings (3VB) where Adrian Beltrami KC represents the liquidators as they battle over allegations of negligence and misrepresentation in the $8.4 billion battle. The numbers are eye-watering, even by City standards. Evergrande’s liquidators (led by Alvarez & Marsal’s Edward Middleton and Tiffany Wong) are pursuing 57 billion yuan (roughly $8.4 billion) in damages from PwC International, PwC Hong Kong, and PwC’s mainland China arm. They allege serious audit negligence and misrepresentation in the years leading up to Evergrande’s historic collapse, a King-sized property failure in a long list of major property failures. Log in to read more . . .
- Paul Weiss Loses Two More Litigation Partners As Rivals Keep Picking Off Its Bench
- Panel Games: Revolut’s New Legal Model is a Quarterly Hunger Games for Big LawIf you’re a partner at a Magic Circle firm currently leaning back in your Herman Miller chair, comforted by the warmth of a three-year panel appointment, you might want to sit up. The fintech disruptor that refuses to play by the rules is, predictably, about to break yours. Revolut, the neobank recently valued at a staggering $45 billion following a secondary share sale (with some internal projections whispering closer to $75 billion), is officially binning the traditional legal panel model. In its place comes “Revolut Partners,” a system designed to treat law firms less like venerable institutions and more like high-performance software vendors. Log in to read more . .
- The Happiest Lawyers In America Work At These Firms — And The Race For #1 Is Now A Photo FinishVault’s 2026-2027 rankings reveal O’Melveny still leads on satisfaction by a hair, Morgan Lewis took the overall crown, and Ropes & Gray jumped 36 spots. Vault just dropped its 2026-2027 Best Law Firms to Work For rankings, and for anyone watching BigLaw’s talent map, the satisfaction data is the most useful slice on the platter. It tells you, in cold associate-survey numbers, where lawyers are actually happy versus merely well-paid — and right now those two things are diverging at the top end of the market in interesting ways. Log in to see who won the industry record . .
- How a Box of Hong Kong Cupcakes Triggered a $36m Law Partner MeltdownQuick question: “If a star rainmaker built ‘their’ office, do they get to secretly take it with them – or does the partnership own everything they touch?” When the Australian Financial Review recently devoted a major feature to “the $36 million box of Hong Kong cupcakes”, it wasn’t really about baked goods – it was about how a high‑performing litigation boutique managed to blow itself up in plain sight. Log in to see what happened . . .
- $230bn in Five Days, Two Partners Out the Door – Wachtell’s High-Stakes ReckoningThe firm that pays its partners $12 million a year just can’t stop losing them. Here’s why that paradox may be the most important story in Big Law right now. Wachtell Lipton broke every profitability record in Am Law 100 history in 2026 — and watched nine partners walk out the door to rivals offering something the numbers alone couldn’t match. What’s really driving the exodus from Wall Street’s most envied firm, whether the lockstep model can survive the age of the $80 million guarantee, and what it all means for the future of elite legal practice: it’s all inside. Log in to read the breaking Big Law story . .
- The Elite Law Pipeline to Prison And How a Decade-Long Insider Trading Ring Pierced Big Law’s Inner CircleA 30-person federal indictment has implicated attorneys from Wachtell, Latham, Willkie, Goodwin, Cleary, Sidley, Weil and DLA Piper in what prosecutors call one of the most sweeping M&A intelligence networks ever prosecuted on American soil. The access a law firm grants its attorneys is built on a simple, foundational covenant: what comes through the door stays within those walls. For a decade, federal prosecutors allege, a network of Ivy League-trained lawyers decided that covenant was negotiable — and that confidential merger data was simply a different kind of billable asset. L:og in to read more . . .
- Paul Weiss Sheds Litigation Associates Citing Performance Reviews as Firm Navigates Litigation SlowdownPaul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison has parted ways with several litigation associates following its annual performance review cycle, possibly marking a structural change from the relatively recently annointed firm chair Scott Barshay (pictured). According to reporting by The American Lawyer, the New York-based firm, which has long prided itself on avoiding public layoffs, including during the 2008 financial crisis and the 2022 financial correction . . Log in to read more . . .
