Profile

As a former general counsel of both a public company and a private company, Allen W. Nelson has significant experience leading global teams, and providing advice on a wide range of topics important to boards of directors, members of senior management, and investors. His focus at Taylor English is on leveraging the Firm’s considerable in-house experience to provide tailored solutions to General Counsels, in-house lawyers, entrepreneurs and business owners who want lawyers that can “plug and play” into their businesses.

Mr. Nelson was the General Counsel of 8 Rivers Capital, LLC. 8 Rivers Capital develops sustainable infrastructure (particularly in the zero carbon emissions energy space). In that role, Mr. Nelson oversaw a portfolio of hundreds of patents globally; worked extensively with inventors on emerging technologies; and, protected the company’s proprietary information vigorously.

Prior to joining 8 Rivers, Mr. Nelson was the General Counsel, Corporate Secretary and Chief Administrative Officer of Crawford & Company (NYSE: CRD.A and CRD.B). Crawford is the world’s largest publicly-traded claims management firm, which operates in more than 70 countries around the world. Mr. Nelson advised the company’s Board of Directors and senior management on a wide variety of legal and business issues including mergers and acquisitions (for which he was responsible for dozens of transactions); ethics and compliance; litigation matters; government investigations and negotiations; and the legal and compliance aspects of Crawford's status as a NYSE-listed company among many other areas of law and business. At various times during his tenure, Mr. Nelson was also responsible for internal audit; ethics and compliance; human resources; corporate communications; and real estate.

Prior to joining Crawford, Mr. Nelson was BellSouth Corporation’s Chief Compliance Counsel. He also managed legal matters for the company's political activities; its risk management function; litigated matters; traditional labor and employment matters; as well as intellectual property issues. Mr. Nelson also supported major transactions, including the acquisition of AT&T Wireless by Cingular Wireless. Prior to joining BellSouth, Mr. Nelson practiced in two Atlanta-based law firms, focusing on commercial litigation and employment/labor law.

Mr. Nelson currently teaches an upper-level course on in-house practice at Duke University School of Law as a senior lecturing fellow. Topics include ethics and compliance; public company matters; litigation; international law; employment law; and a wide variety of other corporate law topics.

Memberships

State Bar of Georgia

American Bar Association

International Association of Defense Counsel

Fellows of the American Bar Foundation

Community Involvement

Atlanta Ballet, Former Chairman, Board of Trustees

Duke University Alumni Association, Member of Global Board of Directors

The Woodruff Arts Center, Board Trustee

Emory University, Former Member, Board of Visitors

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