About Paul Elihu
Paul Elihu Stern is an attorney who has moved between university counsel offices and private practice while building a practice centered on intellectual property and higher education issues. He earned a J.D. from Florida State University College of Law after completing a B.A. at the University of Massachusetts–Amherst. Those degrees preceded a career that has crossed state lines and institutional walls.
He began his legal career in the early 1990s as an associate at Sills, Law, Essad, Fiedler & Charboneau, P.C. That formative period led him back to private practice in 1996 under his own name. The following year he took on an in-house role as Associate General Counsel at the University of Massachusetts. That post introduced him to the legal contours of university administration, research agreements and related compliance matters.
In 2008 Stern accepted a senior counsel position at the University of Florida, where his title identified his responsibility for intellectual property and research. That role involved advising on patents, licensing and the legal structures that support academic research. After more than a decade advising institutions, he again shifted toward the private sector and returned to the name-plate practice model, founding and operating Law Office of Paul Elihu Stern and later joining CPLS, P.A. as a partner in 2018.
In 2019 he established Paul Elihu Law and Consulting, PLLC, a firm that bears his name and reflects the cumulative strands of his career. His practice spans multiple jurisdictions. He is admitted to practice in New York, Massachusetts and Florida. He has handled matters that bridge university technology transfer and private enterprise, advising clients on IP-related transactions and institutional policies.
Stern’s professional affiliations underscore the mix of science and law that marks his work. He has been a member of the Association of University Technology Managers since 1983 and has belonged to the American Association for the Advancement of Science since 2016. Those memberships align with his roles advising research universities and negotiating agreements tied to inventions and commercialization.
Colleagues and clients regard him as an attorney comfortable in both campus settings and boardrooms. He has alternated between in-house counsel positions and private practice roles, bringing an understanding of institutional needs to transactional work. He concentrates on intellectual property law, higher education counsel and technology transfer in his current practice.
