Legal counseling · Los Angeles
Legal counseling for individuals,
small businesses, and startups.
When an agreement, dispute, or business decision raises legal questions, understanding your options is the first step. I help clients assess risk, clarify priorities, and choose a practical path forward.
My work draws on more than two decades of litigation, transactional, and in-house experience. I accept selected engagements, with the scope of each matter agreed at the outset.
Los Angeles, California Consultations by phone and video
Counseling
Sometimes you need advice before signing an agreement. Sometimes you need a clear assessment of a dispute, help negotiating a resolution, or focused assistance with a particular legal task. The engagement should reflect the problem you need to solve.
I counsel clients on commercial agreements, business relationships, and the legal implications of everyday decisions. Work may include reviewing, drafting, and negotiating contracts; identifying obligations and risks; and helping clients understand the practical effect of proposed terms.
My background includes technology and vendor contracts, confidentiality agreements, services agreements, and other commercial arrangements.
I help clients evaluate disputes, understand potential claims and defenses, and consider the costs and benefits of available responses. Counseling may include demand letters, settlement negotiations, litigation strategy, and advice during an ongoing proceeding.
Where appropriate, an engagement may also include defined litigation work or broader representation, based on the matter and availability.
Legal assistance can be structured around a particular agreement, question, negotiation, or stage of a dispute. Other services are considered case by case, including coordination with and management of outside counsel.
We begin by discussing what you need, whether I can help, and the scope of the proposed engagement.
Approach
Understanding what matters to you comes before deciding how to proceed. Preserving a business relationship, managing exposure, resolving uncertainty, and pursuing a claim may call for different approaches.
I aim to explain the relevant law, the strengths and weaknesses of your position, and the tradeoffs involved. Advice should help you make a decision, with uncertainty identified rather than hidden.
The legal response should make sense in light of the stakes. I consider the time, expense, and disruption of a proposed course alongside its potential benefit, and discuss the scope of the work with you.
You work directly with me. I value candid communication, careful preparation, and a shared understanding of the next steps.
Experience
My career has included complex commercial litigation at a national law firm, work with a Los Angeles litigation boutique, independent client representation, and in-house counsel roles in the utility and health care sectors.
That experience spans business disputes, contracts, negotiations, regulatory advice, and the management of outside counsel. It includes advising senior executives and working with teams responsible for putting legal decisions into practice.
I bring that perspective to selected engagements for individuals and smaller businesses: careful legal analysis, attention to practical consequences, and advice grounded in the client's objectives.
I earned my law degree from Boston College Law School and my undergraduate degree from UCLA. I have been admitted to practice in California since 2002.
If you would like to discuss a potential engagement, please get in touch with a brief description of the matter. I will review the inquiry to determine whether I can assist, subject to availability and a conflict check.
Los Angeles, California
Consultations by phone and video; in-person meetings by arrangement.