Practices

Paul Clark is senior counsel in Seward & Kissel’s Financial Services Regulatory Group and is resident in the Firm’s Washington, DC, office. Paul advises a wide range of clients in the financial services industry, including banks, broker-dealers, investment funds and service providers, on federal and state banking and securities law.

During the course of his career at Seward & Kissel, Paul has advised on the structuring of many new financial products that have required addressing both banking and securities law issues, including the first major broker-dealer bank “sweep program” (Merrill Lynch), the first reciprocal deposit program (CDARS) and numerous novel deposit products. Paul has developed the documentation and legal structures that currently support approximately 10% of all domestic deposits in U.S. banks. In addition, Paul has advised sponsors of fixed income auction sites, issuers of stored value cards, operators of social “crowd funding” sites, RoboAdvisors, providers of mobile payment products and providers of products utilizing blockchain technology.

Paul has represented clients in connection with major banking legislation, including FIRREA, FDICIA, GLBA and Dodd-Frank. He regularly represents clients in obtaining both formal and informal guidance from federal and state banking and securities regulators and has represented trade associations, industry coalitions and individual firms in submitting comments on proposed regulations. In 2016 he represented the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association in preparing a joint comment letter with the American Bankers Association and The Clearing House on a proposed FDIC rule that substantially altered customer recordkeeping requirements at the largest banks.

Paul frequently speaks about regulatory issues at industry conferences, including conferences sponsored by both the banking industry and the securities industry. Since 2016 he has been a faculty member at the American Bar Association’s Fundamentals of Banking Law seminar in San Francisco, lecturing on FinTech and deposit products.

Paul is a Lecturer at the University of California School of Law (Berkeley Law).  Since 2017,  he has taught a course on FinTech.  In 2019, he lectured on FinTech at NYU Law School.

Paul is the author of Just Passing Through: A History and Critical Analysis of FDIC Insurance of Deposits Held by Brokers and Other Custodians(Review of Banking and Financial Law, 2012-2013), and the co-author of Regulation of Savings Associations Under the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act of 1989 (The Business Lawyer, 1990).

Paul is a member of the Executive Advisory Board of the Berkeley Center for Law and Business, the Board of Directors of the Berkeley Law Alumni Association and the National Advisory Board of the National Museum of Women in the Arts. He previously served on the Board of Directors of the Washington Chamber Symphony.  In April, 2019, Paul helped organize a workshop on privacy and data protection co-sponsored by Seward & Kissel and the Ostrom Workshop at Indiana University that included speakers from the FTC, CFPB, Consumer Reports, the Bank Policy Institute and Capital One Bank.

Paul was Legislative Assistant to Congressman Mark W. Hannaford from 1976 to 1977.

Publications