Taylor A. Gast

Taylor Gast is a strategic and practical legal partner, helping business leaders navigate complex transactions, growth opportunities, regulatory challenges, and day-to-day legal needs. Taylor is the Co-Practice Group Leader of Foster Swift’s Business & Tax Practice Group. He serves as outside general counsel to businesses and nonprofit organizations of all sizes, helping them execute mergers and acquisitions, manage compliance, solve problems, and plan for long-term success. Taylor’s clients span industries, including credit unions and banks, emerging and technology-focused businesses, and others. He is based in Lansing and frequently partners with clients in Detroit, Grand Rapids, and throughout Michigan and beyond.

Outside General Counsel & Compliance

Taylor provides tailored counsel to emerging and mature companies, financial institutions, and others. He regularly advises on:

• Regulatory & Compliance: Navigating evolving state and federal regulations, addressing tax issues, and ensuring robust compliance programs.
• Governance & Strategy: Advising on corporate governance to align legal strategy with business goals.
• Transactions & Contracts: Guiding clients through a range of transactional matters – from drafting, reviewing, and negotiating contracts to structuring domestic and international deals. Taylor has significant experience with various specialized agreements, including software licensing and development contracts, sports marketing and NIL (name, image, likeness) agreements, terms of sale, and other commercial contracts tailored to diverse industry needs.

Mergers & Acquisitions

A cornerstone of Taylor’s practice, his mergers and acquisitions work includes:

• Pre-Transaction Structuring: Helping clients anticipate tax implications and structure transactions for optimal financial and strategic outcomes.
• Transaction Coordination and Support: Coordinating transactions from negotiation to closing, ensuring that each deal aligns with the client’s strategic growth or exit goals.
• Integration & Long-Term Success: Assisting with post-closing integration and ongoing strategy to help clients realize the full benefits of their transactions.

Financial Institutions & Regulatory Compliance

Taylor helps financial institutions including banks and credit unions manage risk and adapt to a dynamic regulatory landscape. His expertise includes:

• Compliance Oversight: Crafting and implementing strategies that meet stringent regulatory requirements.
• Tailored Transactional Advice: Structuring transactions that reflect each institution’s unique objectives.
• Strategic Risk Management: Offering ongoing outside general counsel to keep clients ahead of regulatory changes and industry trends.

Technology, Data Privacy & Cybersecurity

While his practice spans a wide range of legal challenges, Taylor also has deep experience in data privacy, cybersecurity, and technology law to support clients in managing data privacy and cybersecurity risks. His experience includes:

• Incident Response & Compliance: Advising on data breach responses, regulatory investigations, and proactive privacy measures.
• Technology Transactions: Drafting and negotiating technology contracts and assisting with procurement strategies tailored to clients’ business objectives.

"Top 5 Under 35" Award, Ingham County Bar Association, 2020

Michigan Super Lawyers "Rising Star," Business/Corporate, 2021-2025

• Helped a large, multinational software company respond to a data security incident involving all of its users by determining whether the incident constituted a “breach” under relevant laws and regulations, resolving complex conflict of law issues, assessing who should be notified, navigating regulatory investigations, and mitigating the potential costs of litigation.
• Advised countless entrepreneurs on forming their businesses, growing them through outside investment, and sustaining them as they added employees and negotiated contracts, handling other legal issues as they arose.
• Assisted an innovative technology manufacturing client in partnering with a globally-recognized brand by licensing its proprietary technology to create a new jointly-developed product.
• Helped financial institutions pursue growth strategies by seeking regulatory approval to open new branches, and in all aspects of acquiring several new branch locations.
• Advised Michigan-based clients with sales activity throughout the United States on compliance with sales, income, and other federal, state, and local taxes, and worked to negotiate settlement of past liabilities, mitigating significant potential audit costs.
• Worked with a client to understand the options for withdrawing from public pension system, execute withdrawal from public pension system, and create a more solid foundation to grow its business in the future.
• Helped a growing business client choose between several non-qualified deferred compensation plans, discussed the plans’ tax implications, and worked with the client to begin plan administration, allowing them to better incentivize and retain key employees.

Legal Affiliations:

• State Bar of Michigan
  • Business Law Section
  • Information Technology Law Section
  • Intellectual Property Section
  • Taxation Section

Professional Affiliations:

• International Association of Privacy Professionals

Community Involvement:

• Michigan Technology Network—Lansing, Director
• Arts Council of Greater Lansing, Board Member/Vice President/Executive Committee 
• Impression 5 Science Center, Board Member
• University of Michigan Alumni Association