John Hession is a Partner at Morse, Barnes-Brown & Pendleton, and a member of the firm’s Corporate, Venture Capital and Life Sciences practice groups. Previously, John was a co-founder of Cooley LLP's Boston office, and served as the Managing Partner of the Cooley Boston office for its first several years of operation, helping to steer and grow the Boston office from ten to seventy-plus professionals and staff. For the last thirty-five years, John has represented emerging-growth companies, as both a legal and business advisor, principally in the life sciences, medical device, hardware, software and software services sectors, as well as angels and venture capital funds in the investment process. John is also angel investor in emerging companies. John’s practice includes both start-up, emerging growth and later-stage company work, where he serves as outside general counsel. This work includes corporate governance; equity-based compensation strategies; mergers and acquisitions (representing buyers and sellers); and strategic alliances, corporate partnering, joint ventures, collaboration and development projects, and other strategic alliances involving technology transfers; as well venture capital and angel financings of companies in these sectors, representing principally companies and their management teams. John has structured and negotiated more than 400 debt and equity financings, ranging in scale from $500,000 to $250 million, and more than 350 acquisitions ranging in size from $1.0 million to $4.2 billion. During his thirty-five year career, John has represented more than 400 companies from the earliest stages of development, from cradle to culmination, from inception to liquidity (including public offering and acquisitions). John has won a number of industry awards during his career, including Best Lawyers in America, IP Stars (Managing Intellectual Property), Lawdragon 500 Leading Deal Makers, a Massachusetts Super Lawyer, and Best Lawyers in New England.