John R. Baraniak Jr. is an American lawyer based in Boston, Massachusetts, whose practice has included securities and commercial real estate matters. He was admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1988 and later practiced at Ropes & Gray and Choate Hall & Stewart before serving as a litigation counsel at the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.
Background
Baraniak's professional life began in the late 1980s. He completed his legal studies at the University of Chicago and was admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1988, entering a legal market centered on Boston, where several long-established law firms had their headquarters.
In 1989 he was also admitted to the New Hampshire bar, extending his professional qualifications beyond Massachusetts. His early career was therefore shaped by the New England legal profession, in which admission to more than one state bar allowed lawyers to serve clients across state lines.
Education
Baraniak received a Bachelor of Arts from Dartmouth College in 1985. Founded in 1769 in Hanover, New Hampshire, Dartmouth is an Ivy League college with a liberal arts tradition, and its undergraduate program provided the foundation for his later legal studies.
He then studied at the University of Chicago Law School, receiving a Juris Doctor in 1988. The law school was established in 1902 as part of the University of Chicago, and its faculty scholarship has been documented in a century-long bibliography. The University of Chicago Law Review, published by the school, is a quarterly journal of legal scholarship.
Career
Baraniak's legal career began at Ropes & Gray, where he worked as an associate from 1988 to 1997. The firm was founded in Boston in 1865 by John Codman Ropes and John Chipman Gray, both Harvard Law School graduates, and it later grew into a multinational practice with offices in several countries.
In 1997 he became a partner at Choate Hall & Stewart, a Boston firm founded in 1899 by Charles F. Choate Jr. and John L. Hall, with Ralph A. Stewart joining later. He remained a partner there until 2015. In 2013 he was described as a partner at the firm when he took part in a legal clinic coordinated by Lawyers Clearinghouse at the Pine Street Inn, a Boston shelter for homeless people. He volunteered to work on a case for a client who had been unable to obtain housing because of pending criminal charges.
He was also a partner of a firm identified as S Eggeuno. From 2017 to 2023 he was Senior Litigation Counsel at the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), a self-regulatory organization that oversees securities firms and brokers. He later held the title Director, Litigation, at the organization.
Membership
Baraniak is recorded as a Senior In-House Counsel Fellow of the Litigation Counsel of America, an organization of trial lawyers that recognizes experienced litigators through its fellowship program.
