Matthew Fornaro founded his own law firm in 2015 after deciding that entrepreneurs, startups, founders, and small and midsize businesses needed a different kind of legal practice. That decision followed a career that began in 2003 at two AmLaw 200 firms, where he learned how sophisticated legal matters are handled when the stakes are high. He later had the opportunity to continue on an even larger-firm path, but chose instead to build Matthew Fornaro, P.A., doing business as Fornaro Legal, around the clients he believed were underserved.
The firm provides business law attorney services from its base in Coral Springs, Florida. Its clients are primarily businesses, entrepreneurs, startups, and founders located in South Florida, and increasingly across the New York-Florida corridor. The practice covers contracts and business formation through disputes and litigation. Fornaro describes the work simply: clear guidance for your business, helping clients understand their options and take the next step.
What sets the practice apart, according to Fornaro, is a combination of large-firm training, more than 20 years of litigation and business-law experience, and the perspective of being a business owner himself.
“Fornaro Legal was built to give entrepreneurs, startups, founders, and growing businesses access to sophisticated legal experience without losing the responsiveness, practicality, and personal attention they need to make real business decisions.”
That owner’s perspective is not theoretical. Fornaro has had to build a firm, manage clients, make hiring and technology decisions, deal with overhead, market a business, and make the same kinds of judgment calls his clients make every day. He says this gives him a view that is different from simply practicing business law from the outside.
His litigation background adds another layer. Having seen what happens when contracts, ownership arrangements, and business relationships break down, he brings that experience into transactional work on the front end. At the same time, he does not believe every dispute should become a war. He focuses on judgment, leverage, timing, and the client’s actual business objective.
Fornaro works directly with clients and aims to make the law understandable. His goal is not to overwhelm a business owner with legal terminology, but to explain the risks, the available options, and the practical consequences so the client can make an informed decision.
He began his legal career in 2003 after graduating from the University of Florida Levin College of Law. Before founding his own firm, he developed a foundation in civil litigation and complex disputes at two AmLaw 200 firms. The reason he eventually started his own practice goes back further, to his father’s successful small business. Growing up, he saw firsthand the pressures business owners face and how decisions about employees, money, customers, contracts, and risk could have very real consequences. He also saw how smaller businesses often did not have access to the same level of legal guidance available to larger companies.
As his career developed, he saw that same gap professionally. Entrepreneurs, startups, founders, and small and midsize businesses often needed sophisticated business counsel, but many were not a natural fit for the economics or structure of a large law firm. At the same time, a lot of smaller suburban practices were not really built around the day-to-day legal needs of business owners.
He founded Matthew Fornaro, P.A., doing business as Fornaro Legal, in 2015 with a simple idea: bring the experience, preparation, and sophistication he learned in larger firms directly to entrepreneurs and business owners, but deliver it in a more practical, responsive, and personal way. He wanted clients to have access to experienced business counsel who understood not just the legal issue, but what they were actually trying to build, protect, and grow.
Fornaro has practiced law since 2003, giving him more than 20 years of legal experience. His firm has been operating for more than 10 years. He is admitted to practice in three jurisdictions: Florida, New York, and the District of Columbia, as well as before the United States Supreme Court. His practice has expanded beyond traditional representation. He has served as a Florida Supreme Court Certified County Mediator, a Florida Supreme Court Qualified Arbitrator, and a FINRA Dispute Resolution Arbitrator. He has also taught and mentored entrepreneurs through programs connected with the Kauffman Foundation FastTrac NewVenture Program and the Jim Moran Institute. He earned an AV Preeminent rating through Martindale-Hubbell, which reflects peer recognition of legal ability and professional ethics.
Fornaro is careful with numbers. He does not want to manufacture statistics that are not meaningful or verifiable. The numbers he is most comfortable highlighting are the ones that reflect real experience: 20-plus years in practice, more than 10 years running his own firm, two AmLaw 200 firms, three state and bar jurisdictions, and U.S. Supreme Court admission.
From a business perspective, one of the most meaningful achievements is simply that he has built and sustained an independent business-law practice for more than a decade while continuing to serve entrepreneurs, startups, founders, executives, investors, and established companies throughout South Florida and now increasingly across the New York-Florida corridor.
