Patrick T. Clendenen is a partner in Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough’s Boston office. He is an experienced business and corporate litigator, with an extensive background in business and fiduciary, products liability, class action, derivative, and securities litigation practices; intellectual property litigation practice, with an emphasis on Internet, patent, trade dress, and trade secret matters; and land use and real estate litigation practice, with an emphasis on lease disputes, access, civil rights, and constitutional claims. He has represented a wide range of public and private business and corporate clients nationally in both the state and federal courts of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, New York, Delaware, Virginia, Illinois, Florida, Texas, Arizona, Ohio, and California. He has also represented business and corporate clients in cross-border disputes, both in litigation and in alternative dispute resolution.  

Mr. Clendenen is a member of the bars of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the State of Connecticut, the District of Columbia, the U.S. District Courts for the Districts of Massachusetts and Connecticut, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, and the U.S. Supreme Court. In 2004, he was named by his peers as a Massachusetts Super Lawyer in the Business Litigation category. 

Mr. Clendenen is a member of the American Bar Foundation and the Massachusetts Bar Foundation and served on the American Bar Association’s Special Committee on Gun Violence from 2005-2008.  He was a 2000-2002 Fellow in the ABA’s Section of Business Law and thereafter co-chaired the Business Law Section’s Fellows and Ambassadors Program from 2002-2005. He now is chair of the Business Law Section’s Meetings Committee and serves as editor of Business Law Today.  He is also the chair of the Business and Corporate Litigation Committee’s Class and Derivative Actions Subcommittee. He is a former co-chair of the Business and Corporate Litigation Subcommittee on Pro Bono, a former editor of The Young Lawyer, a former director of the ABA’s Young Lawyers Division, and a former chair of its Litigation Committee. Locally, Mr. Clendenen chaired the Massachusetts Bar Association’s Civil Litigation Section Council and served as a member of the MBA’s Executive Management Board. He is also a former member of the MBA’s Budget and Finance Committee and the MBA’s Lawyer Referral Service Committee, and he is the former chair of the MBA’s New Lawyers Section and its Community Services Subcommittee. He served for two terms as a delegate-at-large to the MBA House of Delegates and served on the ABA Delegate Nominating Committee. 

He serves on the Board of Visitors of the Catholic University of America, Columbus School of Law and is president of its Law School Alumni Chapter (Boston).  He also serves on Colby College’s Boston Liaison Board for the Goldfarb Center for Public Affairs and Civic Engagement and Choate Rosemary Hall’s Volunteer Admissions Network (regional co-chair, New England). He is the past chair and member of the Greater Boston Board of Directors of the American Heart Association, Massachusetts Affiliate, Inc.  He served for six years on the board of the Wellesley Youth Hockey Association, Inc., and was president from 1999-2001.  He is a co-founder of Boston’s Lawyers Have Heart 5K Road Race. 

Mr. Clendenen has written or co-authored book reviews, chapters, and articles in various publications, including Thompson/West’s Internet Law and Practice, the ABA Business Law Section’s Review of Developments in Business and Corporate Litigation (chapters on Class Actions, Derivative Litigation, and Non-Profit Litigation), The Boston Bar Journal, Business Law Today, The Massachusetts Bar Association’s Lawyers Journal, and The Young Lawyer. He has spoken on, and chaired, continuing legal education panels relating to trial practice, including class actions, derivative litigation, D&O liability, and pro bono. 

Prior to joining Nelson Mullins, Mr. Clendenen served clients from another Boston Firm. He also has clerked for the Honorable Ellen Bree Burns of the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut. 

He earned his Juris Doctor in 1991 from the Columbus School of Law at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., where he received Academic Distinction, the Dean’s Award, and American Jurisprudence Awards in both Property and Administrative Law. While at Catholic, he authored a note and was the student editor-in-chief of The Journal of Contemporary Health Law and Policy. While in law school, he worked also as a law clerk for the U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, in the Office of Complaint Adjudication. 

He earned an A.B., magna cum laude, from Colby College in 1988, with distinction in both Government and Economics, and he is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and Pi Sigma Alpha. At Colby, he played both varsity soccer and ice hockey, and he received the Norman H. White Award for leadership and sportsmanship.