Zach Forward

Zach is co-chair of Barclay Damon’s Corporate Practice Area. His work spans the business life cycle, from entity formation and growth to transactions, restructuring and exit. He advises businesses ranging from sole proprietorships and start-ups to multinational corporations, including privately and publicly held companies.

Zach provides ongoing business and corporate counsel, drafts and negotiates agreements, and handles general corporate entity maintenance. His transactional work includes mergers and acquisitions, reorganizations, restructurings and dissolutions. In M&A matters, he coordinates with the firm’s tax, real estate, environmental, regulatory, and labor and employment attorneys to address issues that arise across those disciplines.

His clients include growing and established businesses in regulated industries, among them energy, health care and cannabis. Zach holds an MBA and a BS in business, a background that complements his work with business leaders on corporate matters.

• Represented numerous business clients in various stock and asset transactions regarding the sale of their company, including initial legal due diligence and drafting purchase agreements, employment agreements, escrow agreements, and other related documents.
• Represented a licensed medical professional during a restructuring and eventual sale of his multi-million practice to a nationwide aggregator of managed service providers.
• Provides day-to-day legal counsel for many closely held businesses, including general corporate maintenance, transition planning, and other contractual relationships.
• Assisted a renewable energy client in buying and selling various solar projects located throughout the Northeast.
• Serves as counsel for a provider of a portable electric-car-charging technology company, handling day-to-day legal needs that include employment agreements, contracts, and general legal questions.
• Counseled a start-up in connection with obtaining its Series A financing. This work involved using the NVCA model terms and drafting founder contracts, employee confidentiality and invention assignments (EIAAs), and an equity incentive plan among other agreements.
• Successfully obtained tax-exempt status under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code for various not-for-profit corporations, including assisting with completing Form 1023 and drafting the by-laws and conflict-of-interest policy.
• Drafted an agreement to purchase industrial hemp biomass for a cannabinoid-products company.
• Served as general outside counsel in financing a transaction that included equity rights to Orion Energy Partners, LP, a specialized venture capital group that provides financial assistance to energy-related industries. Relevant issues included real property title, environmental, and intercreditor agreements.

• Wake Forest University School of Law, JD
• Wake Forest University School of Business, MBA
• Cornell University, BS

• The Best Lawyers in America®: Business Organizations (including LLCs and Partnerships), 2025–2027; Corporate Law, 2025–2026
• Central New York Business Journal, 40 Under Forty, 2023
• Selected to Super Lawyers Upstate New York Rising Stars: Business/Corporate, 2021
• New York State Bar Association, Empire State Counsel Honoree, 2013

• Oswego County Business Magazine, "What Advice Would You Give to Someone Who's Starting a Business Now?"
• Law360 Pulse, "Barclay Damon Announces New Group, Committee Leaders"