About Nicole Blakely

Nicole Blakely joined Leventhal Law as Of Counsel with a practice focused on transactional business law and consulting on general corporate and business matters.  In addition to her general transactional practice, Blakely offers creative and practical strategies to accomplish business objectives and institute efficient legal processes for companies – offering an alternative approach for companies to outsource their in-house needs.

Blakely joined Leventhal Law after serving for nearly eight years as General Counsel and Vice President of Avalon Capital Group, Inc., the billion dollar private investment company of Gateway founder, Ted Waitt. While at Avalon Capital Group, she was responsible for corporate compliance, contract drafting and negotiations, investor relations, private equity structure and negotiations, real estate acquisitions, legal strategy and planning, litigation management and providing counsel to the Board of Directors and other executive management. In her role at Avalon Capital Group, Blakely also concurrently served as General Counsel to the Waitt Foundation, Waitt Institute and Waitt Institute for Violence Prevention, which are nonprofits formed by Ted Waitt with combined assets over $150 million.

Prior to Avalon Capital Group, Blakely served as General Counsel at Rusty, Inc., an action sports and apparel company. She advised the company in corporate compliance, trademark and intellectual property issues, as well as negotiated and drafted contracts, licenses and other entity structure documents. In addition, Blakely positioned the company for its potential merger/acquisition to a strategic partner and navigated shareholder relations related to the transaction.

Before joining Rusty, Inc., she was in private practice for nearly a decade, focusing on business and transactional business law. Blakely graduated cum laude from Tulane Law School in 1995 and obtained a master’s degree in European History from the University of California, San Diego. She graduated magna cum laude from State University of New York at Albany with a bachelor’s degree in Anthropology.