Averill Bancroft
About
Averill Bancroft founded Bancroft Law Office to do one thing well: give companies operating on both sides of the Atlantic a single place to bring a commercial problem, rather than two sets of lawyers who each see half of it.
Her practice sits where corporate work meets dispute work. She negotiates and drafts the agreements that hold a business together — supply, distribution, joint venture, services, shareholder — and she litigates them when they fail. Having spent years reading contracts to a court, she drafts them the way she would want to read them back.
She advises employers through restructuring, senior exits and reorganizations in both jurisdictions, where a single commercial decision has to survive two very different procedural regimes. And she structures inbound and outbound investment for clients moving capital between the United States and the United Kingdom, where the tax treatment, the holding structure and the enforcement position all have to be decided before the money moves rather than after.
Averill takes a deliberately small number of matters at a time. Clients deal with her, not with a team assembled around her — and she says so plainly when a matter would be better handled somewhere else.
Representative Experience
- Advised a US manufacturer on restructuring its distribution network across the United Kingdom and Ireland, including the termination of long-standing agreements and negotiation of replacement terms.
- Defended an employer through a multi-claimant tribunal claim following a workforce reduction, resolving the matter in full before the hearing.
- Structured the UK holding vehicle for a Midwest investor group acquiring a portfolio of commercial property, including treaty analysis and repatriation planning.
- Negotiated a transatlantic joint venture between a technology company and its distribution partner, with arbitration seated in a neutral jurisdiction.
- Acted for a founder in a shareholder dispute over the construction of an earn-out clause, securing a negotiated exit.
- Advised a professional services firm on the employment, data protection and regulatory consequences of opening a second office in the United Kingdom.
Practice Areas
Education
- J.D., Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law
- Graduate Diploma in Law and Legal Practice Course, BPP University Law School, London
- B.A. in Economics, University of Illinois
Admissions
- Illinois — admitted by the Supreme Court of Illinois
- United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois
- Solicitor of the Senior Courts of England and Wales
Languages
- English — native
- French — professional working proficiency
- Spanish — conversational
Recognition
- Instructed as lead counsel on transatlantic commercial matters by clients in both jurisdictions
- Speaks regularly to business and in-house counsel audiences on cross-border contracting and workforce change
- Writes the firm's Insights program on commercial contracting, employment process and investment structuring