Edward J. Hardin

Edward J. "Jack" Hardin is a senior corporate lawyer with over fifty years of experience in guiding boards and senior corporate leaders on strategic matters and he is deeply embedded in the civic life of Atlanta. Jack is Chairman of the Fulton County Board of Health, Co-Chair of the Regional Commission on Homelessness, President of the Georgia Legal Services Foundation, Chairman Emeritus (and founder) of Gateway, LLC, a homeless services center, Vice Chairman of the Board of Georgia Works! Inc., a residential workforce program for the chronically homeless, a member of the Boards of Grady Health Foundation and Partners for Home, Inc., and co-Founder of the National Committee for CARE USA.

He is the recipient of numerous community service awards including awards from the Rotary Club of Atlanta, the Atlanta Regional Commission, St. Vincent de Paul Georgia, Solomon’s Temple, Buckhead Rotary, Mercy Care, the Georgia State Law School, WesleyWoods Foundation, Veterans Empowerment Organization Atlanta Business Turknett Leadership Group, Robert K. Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership, State Bar of Georgia, Chief Justice’s Commission on Professionalism, Emory University Law School, the Anti-Defamation League, HOPE Atlanta, United Way, Georgia Budget and Policy Institution.

He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a former Chair of the Board of Directors of the United Way of Metropolitan Atlanta, a former Chairman of the Board of the Harvard Center for the Study of World Religions, a former Chairman of the Board of Paideia School, Inc., and a former Chairman of the Board of Invesco Mortgage Capital Inc., a real estate investment trust (REIT). He served for nine years as a director of Grady Memorial Hospital Corporation. He is also a co-founder of the Addiction Alliance of Georgia.

For the past 20 years, Jack’s peers have consistently selected him as one of the best corporate attorneys in the United States when surveyed biannually by The Best Lawyers in America®. Additionally, Best Lawyers® named him the Atlanta “Lawyer of the Year” in Corporate Law in 2011. Jack has been listed Senior Statesman for Corporate/M&A law by Chambers USA. Super Lawyers has named him one of the top 10 Georgia Lawyers three times based upon peer surveys, and he has been listed as one of the 500 most influential Georgians by Georgia Trend magazine since the advent of the list.

Jack's Practice

Representative Matters

• For the past twenty-five years, Jack has advised the board of a major professional service firm as it ceased providing services, sold practice groups, liquidated and operates remaining assets.
• Advised, for over 40 years, until his death, one of the earliest practitioners of the art of leveraged buyouts and many of the companies so acquired.
• Advised the Board of a major real estate investment trust through bankruptcy and restructuring around a savings and loan subsidiary.
• Advised the Board of one of the largest operators of acute care psychiatric hospitals as it filed for, operated in, and exited bankruptcy.
• Has, and continues to, advise a series of Spanish technology companies in the creation and operation of U.S. holding companies to access U.S. capital markets.