Philip F. Zeidman

Retired Partner

About

Philip Zeidman devotes his practice to domestic and international distribution, licensing and franchising law.

Philip has been admitted to practice before the US Supreme Court and in the District of Columbia, New York, Florida and Alabama. He graduated with honors from Yale College, where he was named Scholar of the First Rank and was Managing Editor of the Yale Banner Publications. At Yale he received both the Jonathan Davenport Award and the William Houston McKim Award. He was elected Chairman of the Class Council of his class at Yale, received its first Distinguished Service Award and was named its representative to the Association of Yale Alumni. He received his law degree from Harvard University and also studied at the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration. Philip has served as a member of the advisory board of the Yale School of Organization and Management; as a trustee of the Yale-China Association; and as a member of the advisory board of the DeWitt Wallace Center for Communications and Journalism of the Terry Sanford Institute for Public Policy of Duke University.

Philip has written extensively on the subject of international franchising, distribution and licensing, including regular columns in Franchise Times. He has also written for Franchising World and Global Competition Review. He is the author of Aspects of the Market Economy: Franchising, which has been translated into Russian and also serves as a textbook for courses on entrepreneurism in eastern Europe. Philip also served as the general editor of the American Bar Association's Survey of Laws and Regulations Affecting International Franchising; associate editor of the International Journal of Franchising and Distribution Law; and consulting editor of CCH's Global Franchising Alert and editor of (Lexology) Getting The Deal Through: Franchise and the Franchise Practice Guide.

Philip is the editor of Legal Aspects of Selling and Buying (Thomson/Reuters) and Franchising: Regulation of Buying and Selling a Franchise (Bureau of National Affairs). He has written for publications including The Asian Wall Street Journal and Worldlink, and has been interviewed on such television programmes as The Today Show, The McNeil/Lehrer Report, WorldNet, CNN Asian Business Report and the CNN financial network, CNNfn. He served as a contributing editor for antitrust and trade regulation of The Legal Times and as a member of the advisory board of the Bureau of National Affairs' antitrust and trade regulation report. For 21 years Philip chaired both the annual New York Law Journal distribution seminar and the annual bi-coastal franchising symposium, which then became the franchising segment of the annual Practicing Law Institute advanced antitrust seminars.

Philip is counsel to a number of US and foreign companies and trade associations. He served as a Trial Lawyer for the Federal Trade Commission; General Counsel to the Small Business Administration (when he was named to that position, at age 30, he was the youngest chief legal officer of any department or agency of the federal government); and Special Assistant to the Vice President of the United States. Politically, in addition to serving the Vice President, he was a speech writer in two presidential campaigns; Executive Director of the Democratic Platform Committee in a third; and travelled with Governor Jimmy Carter as an advisor to him throughout his successful general election campaign). He served as General Counsel to the International Franchise Association throughout his career and also served as Special Counsel to the Japan Franchise Association.

Philip has engaged in a transactional practice, testified on franchising before governmental bodies, participated in judicial and administrative proceedings, taught at universities and appeared before business and professional groups in 35 countries around the world and before the Commission of the European Union, as well as before numerous US congressional committees. He has advised a number of government bodies on franchising as a technique for international development and the privatisation of state-owned enterprises: these include the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (Paris), on work in central and eastern Europe; the World Intellectual Property Organization (Geneva), assisting in the development of its franchising guide for developing countries; the International Centre for Public Enterprises (Ljubljana), helping to create an international franchising databank for use in transitional economies; the International Executive Service Corps, introducing franchising into Morocco; Unidroit, a UN-affiliated agency (Rome), advising on the regulation of international franchising; the US Agency for International Development, working with the Indian government to assist black entrepreneurs in post-apartheid South Africa and assisting the privatisation agencies of the former Soviet Union; the Middle East Investment Initiative, to introduce franchising into Tunisia; and the World Bank, on franchising as a non-equity mode of investment in developing countries and on international franchising generally and on proposed regulation in Saudi Arabia. Most recently, he was retained by the Egyptian Franchise and Development Association and the Cairo Regional Centre for International Commercial Arbitration to participate in the first seminar on franchising in Egypt, and to conduct a discussion of the proposed Egyptian franchise legislation with government officials, legal and business leaders. He also served on the International Chamber of Commerce's working group on franchising (Paris).

Areas of FocusFranchise Litigation, Arbitration and Investigations Regulatory and Government Affairs

Bar admissionsDistrict of ColumbiaNew York

Education

LL.B., Harvard Law School
Studied at the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration

B.A., Yale University
cum laude
Scholar of the First Rank

Awards