Get in Touch

Attorney Advertising. This page is for general information only and does not constitute legal advice.

Managing Attorney — Corporate, M&A & Commercial Litigation

Thomas Howard is the Managing Attorney of Howard East. He counsels business owners through the transactions and disputes that define a company’s life: the sale of a professional practice built over decades, the acquisition that changes a company’s trajectory, the partnership that must be restructured — or unwound — and the license that has to be in hand before the doors open.

His clients are operators. Dentists and physicians buying or selling practices. Founders who have raised capital and now have to deploy it. Owners of clinics and other regulated businesses working through licensure. Partners in profitable companies who no longer agree about the future. Thomas has practiced since 2008, and his work is organized around a single premise: transactional counsel should anticipate litigation, and litigation counsel should understand the deal.

Thomas Howard — business attorney, Chicago skyline

From the Securities Desk to the Deal Table

Before he practiced law, Thomas held Series 7 and Series 66 securities licenses. He came to the profession already trained in how capital is raised, how risk is priced, and how sophisticated buyers evaluate an investment — a foundation most business lawyers acquire secondhand, if they acquire it at all.

That background is a working asset in M&A and securities-adjacent matters. When a letter of intent arrives, Thomas reads it the way the buyer’s advisors do: what the multiple assumes, where the earnout shifts risk, which representations will be fought over, and what the diligence process is actually designed to surface. Clients get counsel who speaks finance natively and translates it into contract terms — not a lawyer learning the economics of the deal from the other side’s banker.

Mergers, Acquisitions & Practice Transitions

Thomas leads Howard East’s M&A practice, representing buyers and sellers of closely held companies and professional practices. For dentists, physicians, and other practice owners, a sale is usually the largest transaction of their careers — and often the first. Thomas manages the full arc: preparing the business for market, the letter of intent, diligence, the purchase agreement, and the transition terms that determine what life looks like the day after closing.

The work is detail-driven by design. Asset sale or equity sale. Working-capital targets, escrows, and holdbacks. Earnouts, seller notes, and rollover equity. Restrictive covenants written to be enforceable rather than ornamental. Real estate held in a separate entity. And, for professional practices, the ownership and transition rules that govern who may own, operate, and bill through the entity being sold. Thomas’s job is to keep the economics the client negotiated intact all the way through the paper.

On the buy side, he represents companies and funded founders executing acquisitions — structuring the offer, pressure-testing the target’s numbers, and sequencing diligence so that problems surface while the client still has leverage.

Commercial Litigation & Partnership Disputes

Some disputes cannot be drafted away. Thomas represents owners and companies in commercial litigation, with particular depth in partnership and shareholder disputes — the business-divorce cases in which people who built something together no longer agree about control, money, or both.

These cases combine corporate law, fiduciary duties, valuation, and, frequently, raw leverage. Thomas approaches them the way he approaches a transaction: define the client’s actual objective — exit at a fair price, keep the company, remove a partner, protect a claim — and build the case posture that gets there. He prepares each matter to be tried and positions it to settle well, and his clients benefit from a litigator who can read the financial statements sitting at the center of the dispute.

He also handles the commercial disputes operating companies accumulate: contract actions, vendor and customer disputes, and claims arising out of transactions that failed to close.

Licensing for Regulated Businesses

When a business needs the government’s permission to operate, the license is the business. Thomas’s regulated-industry licensing practice serves clinics and other regulated enterprises: application strategy, ownership-structure requirements, disclosure obligations, and the compliance posture that protects a license after it is granted. He has secured operating licenses for clients in seven states. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.

Licensing also shapes the deals themselves. An acquisition in a licensed industry is only as strong as the approvals that let the buyer operate what it bought, and Thomas builds those approvals into the transaction timeline from the start.

Bar & Court Admissions

Education

Thomas Howard’s Recognition & Bar Leadership

Thomas was selected to Illinois Super Lawyers in 2025 and 2026, and to the Super Lawyers Rising Stars list each year from 2015 through 2020. He has served on the Illinois State Bar Association’s Commercial Banking and Immigration section councils, and he writes on business-law topics as an author at the ISBA’s Illinois Lawyer Now.

Beyond the Practice

Regulated markets are where Thomas built his public record. He chaired the Illinois State Bar Association’s Cannabis Law Section Council in 2023 and hosts Cannabis Legalization News, a podcast and YouTube channel with more than 91,000 subscribers covering the law of one of the country’s most tightly regulated industries. He also hosts Deal or Dispute, a show about business transactions and the litigation that follows them; was featured by WCBU, Peoria’s NPR affiliate, in 2025; and has 179 articles indexed on Muck Rack. For clients, the point is practical: when your business depends on a license, it helps to hire counsel who has spent years explaining — publicly and on the record — how regulated industries actually work.

Schedule a Confidential Consultation

Howard East represents business owners at decision points — a practice sale, an acquisition, a partnership dispute, a license application. The best time to involve counsel is before positions harden and terms get set. We keep the first conversation focused on your objective, your timeline, and whether we are the right firm for the work.

Much of Thomas Howard’s work is offered at transparent flat fees — including the DSO offer review for dentists weighing a sale, the clinic formation & MSO package, and the partnership dispute strategy session.

Schedule a confidential consultation with Thomas Howard. Call 833-952-3111.



Request a Matter Review

Tell us about your business issue. We review every inquiry and respond if we are the right fit.