Executive Bio
Eric Esperne,
President and Principal Consultant
Eric worked for 15 years as an in-house attorney for MCI WorldCom and Cable & Wireless, two multi-national telecom's, and for several small Government and commercial contractors in the Washington, DC, area, prior to founding James River Consulting.
At MCI WorldCom, Eric became the lead staff attorney supporting corporate procurement of software and IT services. Eric also served as the lead attorney in negotiating and managing all corporate Y2K remediation contracts. Other projects at MCIW included supporting the re-launch of a retail dial up Internet service to compete with AOL and advising the company on outsourcing all IT operations to EDS. 
While at MCI, Eric negotiated more than one hundred license agreements ranging from tens of thousands to tens of millions of dollars.
As a senior staff attorney at Cable & Wireless, Eric worked extensively with product development teams on standard paper and online contracts for a wide array of network and Web hosting services sold both in the US and in Europe. After successful launch of the products, Eric supported all telecommunications and computer systems procurement in the US. Other general duties at C&W included advising C&W's UK parent company on US Internet regulatory policy and serving as lead senior staff attorney in support of the company's US fiber back bone.
In the Government contracting arena, Eric served as Director of Contracts and General Counsel, respectively, for MSI (now Lason) and Catapult Technology, both IT services providers doing business with the Federal government, both as prime contractors and as subcontractors to larger companies; MSI also conducted substantial business with State and Local governments.
At both Lason and Catapult, Eric wrote and updated the employee manuals, drafted independent contractor agreements, and otherwise advised the companies on human resources matters. Catapult was a very early adopter of "co-employment," now called professional employment organizations (PEOs). Because Catapult was the co-employment company's largest customer, Eric advised both companies on co-employment issues including rewriting the co-employment agreement itself.
Eric holds a BA in political science from Northwestern University, a JD from American University, a Certificate from The George Washington University Government Contracts program, and course work in the Georgetown University LLM program and towards an MS in Technical and Science Communication at Drexel University.
Eric is a member of the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council, the Massachusetts Network Communications Council, the New England Corporate Counsel Association, and the Purchasing Managers Association of Boston.
Eric is licensed to practice law in the Commonwealth of Virginia.