For over 25 years, I have been a Silicon Valley business lawyer with a specialty in early-stage tech startups. I have practiced business, corporate, commercial, and intellectual property law and have served as a business and corporate lawyer for a broad range of startup and business clients, from small family businesses to leading companies in the high tech field. I have concentrated on helping entrepreneurs, founders, executives, and thecompanies they own and operate, in all types of industries. Withrespect to the tech field in particular, I have worked withstartups in depth at every stage of their development: formation,founder arrangements, intellectual property protection, funding,technology licensing, strategic alliances, and acquisition. I function as a strategic adviser to startup businesses and bringsubstantial experience and depth to that role. I have a direct stylethat appeals to entrepreneurs as well as a credibility that servesclients well in negotiations.
In each of the areas listed as my practice areas, I have done not only extensive transactional work but have also handled disputes and litigated cases - that is, business, corporate, and intellectual property litigation (not patent). I am a strong proponent of the view that entrepreneurs are well-served if a lawyer can handle deals and disputes seamlessly, and I have always sought to stay sharp in both transactional and litigation matters within the commercial field.
Concerning my 4-attorney boutique firm: We are business lawyers with a specialty in early-stage tech startup 1984, we have helped small to mid-sized businesses, startups,entrepreneurs, and executives – several thousand in all. We help formcompanies - fund them - sell or merge or acquire them – sell theirassets - do their corporate work, employment work, contracts, leases,and standard terms – licensing, trademark, and IP work (not patent filings) – founder andequity incentive structures – commercial deals of all types. We also dolitigation: business - corporate - contract – fraud – trade secret –unfair competition - employment - business break-ups (including corporate and partnership dissolution actions) - commerciallitigation generally.
See for a representative list of current and former clients (while we specialize in tech startups, our roots lie with traditional small business clients of all types, and we continue to value small business clients as a part of our law firm).
As a law firm, we seek to be and remain readily approachable and thus offer free (short) initial consultations via phone or email and reduced rate initial consultations in-office - our policies are explained here ().
Every California business, corporate, employment, intellectualproperty (IP), and commercial litigation lawyer in our law firm has atleast 10 years' experience as a practicing attorney in Silicon Valley,Santa Clara County, and the surrounding San Francisco Bay Area.
Ourattorneys represent clients in commercial deals and in commerciallitigation matters throughout the state of California, including SanJose, Silicon Valley, the South Bay Area, Campbell, Cupertino, LosGatos, Sunnyvale, Mountain View, Saratoga, Palo Alto, Los Altos, San Francisco, San Mateo andSanta Clara County.
I have consistently been recognized as a leading startup business and technology lawyer in Silicon Valley. I am a member of the State Bar-CEB Business and Intellectual Property Law Advisory Committee and a frequent contributing author to leading CEB publications (Counseling California Corporations (3rd edition 2008); Advising California Partnerships (3rd edition 2009); California Business Law Practitioner Journal, "Tips, Traps, and Strategies for Representing Early-Stage Startups" (Spring 2008)). I recently served as President of the Sunnyvale-Cupertino Bar Association (2008-09) and have served on its board of directors for many years.
I am a classicist who enjoys reading Latin and ancient (and modern) Greek. I am an avid reader, a classical film buff, and an opera lover. I was born and raised in the midwest but have been a resident of the San Francisco Bay Area since 1968. I am married and serve as a deacon in my church.
