Mark Fischer

Background

Joining YMFZ shortly after its inception and now the firm’s managing shareholder, Mark’s career has focused on both complex commercial contracting and commercial litigation.

He has developed particular expertise in technology contracting in the healthcare and financial space, working with large companies in creating solution-specific contracts for health care benefits and administrative products, financial data solutions, and other “software as a service” (SaaS) applications. Many of these applications involve cooperation between developers, data management vendors and subject matter experts, and require multi-party arrangements which are sensitive to regulatory contexts, intellectual property ownership, and data sharing.

Mark also has a financial institutions practice, providing legal counsel for corporate and commercial finance and asset servicing (including custody and institutional trust).

In addition, Mark provides regular representation for a broad array of small and medium sized clients in connection with business organization and sales, commercial real estate, commercial contract drafting and negotiation, professional consulting contracting (including benefits consulting), business and property litigation, trademark and copyright law, software licensing, employment law, and non-compete covenants. He has counseled many of these clients for more than two decades, as they grow and face evolving legal challenges.

Mark also has an active oil and gas litigation practice, including ownership and development disputes. He recently won an important case at the Ohio Supreme Court on the issue of when oil and gas rights, reserved by prior owners of a property, can be deemed abandoned and vested in the current surface owners. See Fonzi v. Brown, 169 Ohio St.3d 70 (2022).

Education

Franciscan University (B.A., summa cum laude, 1989)
University of Pittsburgh (J.D., magna cum laude, 1993)

Bar and Court Admissions

Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (1993)
State of Ohio (1995)
United States District Court, Western District of Pennsylvania (1993)

Memberships

Allegheny County Bar Association
Order of the Coif
University of Pittsburgh Law Review (Executive Editor)
Board of Directors, Foundation for Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics

Other team members