Eric Fischer is a partner in the firm’s Business Law Department and a member of its Financial Services Group. Mr. Fischer focuses on bank regulatory matters including issues concerning mergers and acquisitions of financial institutions, bank corporate governance, director and officer liability, the bank regulatory process, banking operations and security matters, bank risk management and safety, soundness and examination matters, capital raising initiatives, securities and insurance activities of banks, and financial institution formation and reorganization transactions. Mr. Fischer also advises financial institutions with respect to anti-money laundering and OFAC compliance issues.

Professional Activities

Mr. Fischer has served as chair of the American Bar Association Banking Law Committee’s Task Force on Bank Directors and of its Subcommittee on Community Banks. He is a former chair of the Banking and Financial Services Law Committee of the Boston Bar Association. Mr. Fischer has been selected for inclusion in Chambers USA: America’s Leading Lawyers for Business in the Banking & Finance: Corporate & Regulatory category. He has also been recognized as a “Massachusetts Super Lawyer,” as published in Boston Magazine.

Mr. Fischer currently serves on the Board of Advisors and on the Curriculum Committee of the Morin Center for Banking and Financial Law Studies of the Boston University School of Law.

Publications/Presentations

Mr. Fischer is a frequent lecturer on, and serves as an expert with respect to, topics concerning bank directors and banking regulation. He has published articles concerning a broad range of bank regulatory and corporate governance topics in a number of law reviews, including the Stanford Journal of International Law, the Banking Law Journal, the Journal of Payment Systems Law, the Boston University International Law Journal and Banking & Finance Law Review.

Mr. Fischer has served on more than ten occasions as chair of the Annual Banking Seminar organized by Massachusetts Continuing Legal Education and has participated in numerous panels sponsored by the Massachusetts Bankers Association. Since 1993, he has served as editor of the chapter concerning financial institution mergers and acquisitions in A.S. Pratt & Sons’ Banking and Lending Institution Forms (with Commentary and Checklists). Mr. Fischer has also chaired and participated on numerous occasions in the Annual Financial Services Seminar jointly presented by the Boston Bar Association and Boston University School of Law. He also serves as a co-editor of Goodwin Procter’s Financial Services Alert.

At Stanford Law School, Mr. Fischer was the editor-in-chief of the Stanford Journal of International Law.

Professional Experience

Before joining Goodwin Procter in 2000, Mr. Fischer served as executive vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary of UST Corp., a Boston-based bank holding company, and its banking subsidiaries, USTrust of Boston and United States Trust Company of Boston. He was an associate at the law firm of Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson in New York from 1971-1975 and served as assistant general counsel and assistant secretary of the board of directors at Bank of Boston Corporation from 1976 until he joined UST Corp. in 1986.

From 1984 until 2005, Mr. Fischer taught a course concerning the duties and liabilities of directors and officers and the corporate governance of financial institutions for Boston University School of Law's LL.M. Program.

Bar and Court Admissions

Mr. Fischer is admitted to practice in Massachusetts and New York.

Honors and Awards

In 1999, Mr. Fischer was awarded the “Distinguished Legal Scholar Award,” presented jointly by the Boston Bar Association and the Morin Center at Boston University School of Law. Mr. Fischer's biography has been included under the categories of legal educator and lawyer in Who's Who in America since 1985 and Who's Who in the World since 1998.

Education

LL.M., Boston University School of Law, 1982
J.D., Stanford Law School, 1971
M.B.A., Stanford University, 1971
B.A., University of Pennsylvania, 1967