Carmen Halford

Biography

Carmen Halford is an Assistant Clinical Professor of Law and Director of the Transactional Clinic.

The Transactional Clinic represents small businesses, nonprofits, startups and creatives on a wide range of non-litigation issues, including choice of entity counseling, formations, founders’ agreements, contract drafting, reviews and negotiations, copyright and trademark registrations, licensing and collaborations for music and audiovisual media, applications for tax exemption, and debt and equity issuances. The Clinic also works with community partners to prepare resources and presentations for entrepreneurs and creatives in the Greater Boston Area on how to navigate transactional legal challenges and promote community economic development.

Professor Halford’s scholarship focuses on entrepreneurship and intellectual property law with a focus on exposing and breaking down barriers for creatives and justice-impacted individuals.

Prior to joining the Suffolk Law faculty, Professor Halford spent five years teaching at Harvard Law School where she served as a Clinical Instructor in Harvard Law School’s Transactional Clinics and as the Supervising Attorney of the Recording Artists Project. She was also Lecturer on Law for a first-of-its-kind reading group on Second Chance Entrepreneurship, the study of how justice involvement influences pathways to entrepreneurship for the formerly incarcerated.

Before entering academia, Carmen worked as a transactional associate at the New York firm Kleinberg, Kaplan, Wolff & Cohen, P.C. where she concentrated her practice on mergers and acquisitions, including music catalog sales, debt and equity financings and general corporate matters. She regularly counseled individuals as well as U.S. and foreign enterprises across a wide breadth of industries, cultivating experience in primary and secondary equity sales of private companies, secured and unsecured financings and other complex commercial transactions, and also acted as outside general counsel to many of her clients. Prior to that position, Carmen was a global transactions associate at the New York office of Freshfields.

Carmen holds her JD from Harvard Law School and her BA, summa cum laude, from the University of South Carolina. Prior to her legal career, Carmen worked in the marketing department of CBS Interactive (China) in Beijing.

Bar Admittance:
New York
Massachusetts

Education

JD, Harvard Law School
BA, University of South Carolina