Jim Sandnes joined BSWB in 2008. Jim focuses on complex litigation, including commercial and financial services matters, and works with various businesses, including many marketing and sales companies, providing a broad range of corporate counseling. Prior to joining BSWB, Jim was a partner in two other New York City law firms, where he worked on a wide variety of matters in diverse fields, including a national trial and appellate practice in courts in many jurisdictions.

Jim started his legal career as law clerk to United States District Judge Mary Johnson Lowe in the Southern District of New York and then joined the Wall Street firm of Cahill Gordon & Reindel, where he worked extensively on significant securities, media, First Amendment, entertainment, insurance, trade secret, trademark and taxation litigations. Jim subsequently expanded his practice as a partner in a 30-lawyer New York City firm, where he worked on numerous commercial litigations at both the trial and appellate levels. Important matters included a multi-million dollar jury trial victory (and subsequent appellate affirmance) in a federal trade secrets case; representing the holding company of Singer Sewing Machine Co. in an extensive international bond default and subsequent bankruptcy litigation; representing magician David Copperfield in a high-profile libel litigation against Paris Match; representing the President and the Chief Technology Officer of a publicly traded company in a complex series of multi-jurisdictional litigations (in New York state federal courts and the Delaware Chancery Court), relating to patent ownership and licensing, indemnification rights, proxy rules and in multiple shareholder class actions. In addition, Jim negotiated and drafted many entertainment and marketing licenses and agreements.

In 2000, Jim was asked by a client to become the Executive Vice-President for Legal and Business Affairs of a newly-formed $120 million internet infrastructure technology joint venture (based in Reston, Virginia) between a NYSE listed company and a London Exchange listed company. In that role, Jim not only acted as general counsel, he also supervised and executed a wide range of related activities, including all of the human resources and contracting functions of the company, facilities acquisition/leasing, risk management, and international tax-efficient corporate structuring.

In 2004, Jim returned to private practice, joining another New York City firm as a partner, where he continued his commercial litigation practice, including representing several partners in litigation over the breakup of a series of real estate partnerships and trusts; representing a sales and marketing company seeking federal injunctions in a series of trade secret matters; representing a major aircraft leasing company in litigation related to financing for hundreds of commercial aircraft and the sale-leaseback of several 747 cargo aircraft; representing a corporate officer in litigation seeking to hold him personally liable under ERISA for the failure of his former company to fund certain obligations and for employment tax withholding; and representing broker-dealers and/or brokers in arbitrations of various securities claims, including one involving the putative sale of over a hundred million dollars in corporate debt securities. In addition to commercial litigation, because of the skills Jim gained as a corporate general counsel, Jim is also frequently consulted by clients on a wide variety of transactional, employment, entertainment and marketing matters.