Edward H. Klees | Hirschler Fleischer

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Edward Klees is a partner at Hirschler Fleischer where he leads the Investment Management Practice Group which represents endowments, foundations and outsourced chief investment offices. Mr. Klees also works with investment advisers on alternative investment strategies, including venture capital fund managers for biotech and medical commercialization, including licensing, technology transfer, joint ventures and startups.  Mr. Klees has more than 20 years of experience in investment management, regulatory oversight, risk management, operations, compliance and ethics programs for both institutional investors and investment advisors. His practice also includes representation of academic partners on industry/academic collaborations, consulting and startups. As the author of the “How Safe Are Institutional Assets in a Custodial Bank’s Insolvency?”, the leading paper on bank custody law, Mr. Klees is a widely recognized an expert on bank custody agreements for institutional investors and other corporate clients.  He recently published “The Fandation of Risk: Does a Banking Client Get Its Money Back After Cyber Theft?”, an article examining whether commercial and institutional clients can recover their money after cyber theft, in Business Law Today, and “Is a University a Commodity Pool Operator? The Saga Continues” at hf-law.com.  Mr. Klees also is the co-author, with Nobel Prize winner H. Robert Horvitz, Ph.D., of Connecting with Companies: A Guide to Biomedical Consulting Agreements (2nd edition, 2014).  Mr. Klees serves as the chair of the American Bar Association’s (ABA) Institutional Investors Committee and is a frequent speaker on institutional investment issues at the ABA and other legal and investment conferences.  He is a lecturer at the University of Virginia School of Law where he has taught a course on private equity and hedge funds.

Mr. Klees is former general counsel of the University of Virginia Investment Management Company (UVIMCO), where he advised on a range of institutional investment topics, including securities and investment advisory laws, investment advisory contracts, bank custody, and international issues, as well as compliance and operations as well as board matters. Prior to joining UVIMCO, he was associate general counsel for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, a philanthropy based in Chevy Chase, Maryland, and was in private practice in New York with Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison and Shearman & Sterling. Mr. Klees has a B.A. and J.D. from Columbia University.