Wow!  That was fast.

I”ve been running my own law firm for over a year.  It’s been a blast and I’ve been very fortunate — quite a bit of exciting and interesting work came to my door last year.

Some of the highlights include:

• Managing a dispute from initial demand letter to arbitration award — on my first day running my own firm, one of my clients received a cease and desist letter which we believed was invalid.  We pitched the case to litigators, hired them, and I was able to act as in-house counsel for the 7 month JAMS arbitration: editing and adding factual clarity to filings, attending all depositions and hearings, and eventually delivering the news after judgment.  In general, this is not my day-to-day practice, but it was very educational and modified my perspective on how contracts should be drafted and disputes relating to contracts should be approached.
• Acting as on-site in-house technology counsel one day a week — sitting in the legal department of one of my larger clients gave me a very different understanding of the role that attorneys play within an organization.  I supported the third party inputs to software (reviewing both open source and third party proprietary licenses) and the enterprise licensing division and often witnessed first-hand the delicate balance that must be maintained between legal risk and business risk within a corporation.
• Negotiating against the big guys — it’s part of the typical start-up experience.  Sure, you often negotiate and partner with other start-ups, but at some point, you will need something from one of the big established players.  It may just be Internet connectivity.  Or, large companies may be your sales targets.  Regardless, negotiating against a large company who insists that *we never change our forms*,  *everyone signs this without edits* and *this is completely standard* requires the expertise of someone who has seen many *standard* offerings in the applicable industry.  Over the years, I’ve dealt with Fortune 100 and Fortune 1000 companies in almost every industry, and this year was no exception.  Examples from this year include: Advertising Agencies, Amazon, Barclays, Blue Cross Blue Shield (of America and of various States), Bank of America, Chubb, Credit Suisse, CUNA Mutual Insurance, Discover, DOE Pacific, Earnst and Young, Experian, Facebook, Fidelity, Google, Honeywell, Horace Mann, Humana, JP Morgan Chase, KPMG, Lloyds, Lockheed Martin, Mass Mutual, Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, NBC Universal, Nationwide, PWC, Safeway, Samsung, State Farm, T-Mobile, Toys R US, Viacom, Walmart, and Warner Brothers.
• Setting up the legal side of the business (forms) — a large portion of my job is limiting the amount of work I do.  I try to get my start-up companies into a position where their internal IP creation departments, online systems, sales forces, and business development teams can function with minimal legal input.  This involves an up-front investment of time to create forms that are correct for their business models.  I talk to my clients and truly understand their businesses before drafting, which avoids the extra legal fees companies often incur when their attorney starts with a square hole for a round peg.  Examples include:  Enterprise license agreements, Software-as-a-Service Agreements, trademark license agreements (branding/endorsement/certification programs), software development agreements, click-throughs (standard terms, privacy policies, API license agreements, payment obligations, revenue share, and more), commission agreements, reseller agreements, professional services agreements, master purchase agreements, NDAs, partner program agreements and technology assignment agreements.
• Open Source — I went to law school because I was fascinated by the legal rights issues in Open Source Software.  I even wrote an award winning student note on the topic.  This year, I continued my commitment to Open Source legal issues with projects in several areas:  (i) aided a client in cleanly open sourcing a proprietary language they had developed (open source license evaluation and selection, branding issues, IP contribution agreements); (ii) performed open source audits of client codebases with the engineering teams and cleaned up any issues found; (iii) acted as special open source counsel in an Asset Purchase and Leveraged Buy-Out to help the acquirors become comfortable with the state of my clients’ open source uses; (iv) represented (and continue to represent) two clients whose business models are built around open source software projects that they manage (with monetization through professional services, support, maintenance, priority bug fixes, and bespoke development); (v) aided clients in the development of open source policies and approval processes to maintain the codebase in the proper state.
• Everyday advice, counseling and communications — this catch all category is where the most surprises come.  Sometimes it’s just a phone call asking for a sanity check — Can we do this?  But sometimes there are more exciting issues such as requests from law enforcement, lawsuits that have been filed against clients, high level discussions about IP strategy (should we talk to patent counsel?  Should we file a TM?), letters hinting that lawsuits may be filed, formal letter writing in response to unfortunate situations, termination of contracts, privacy concerns, and much more.

Overall, last year was a great year full of good work, great learning opportunities and wonderful clients.  I can’t wait to see what this year brings.

Just like start-ups have to make major changes with each new stage of their development, so do gardens…

While the summer garden is my absolute favorite stage, it had become very clear that the garden was an overgrown disaster that needed to be modified.

So, I made pickles of the last remaining fruit (mainly just green tomatoes and cucumbers).

And did a solid day of clearing.

The next weekend, I finished clearing, turned the beds, amended 4 beds for winter plants and prepped the garlic (per the Garlicmeister’s instructions).

And finally, winter seedlings are in the ground (along with the garlic bulbs), in time to soak up the rains from the latest rainstorm.

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Only 2 months until it’s time to start the pepper seeds…

Today, I arrived at the Clean Technology Law Symposium excited to learn more about the current state of the law in clean tech.

It was an excellent event, and the organizers deserve much credit and thanks. Overall, I found myself continually impressed by how many areas of the law are implicated with clean tech law, policy, and business. Speakers touched on antitrust, international intellectual property, patent pools, compulsory licensing, economics, politics, state regulation, federal regulation, international treaties, financing, science, the current technology of the energy grids in deployment, and new developments in technology.

Arthur J. O’Donnell, executive director of CRS (the Center for Resource Solutions) gave a great keynote full of the history and culture behind the U.S. and California energy grid development and regulation. He pointed out that in most clean tech companies and industry events, there is a real dearth of folks from the existing utilities communities. And, in his opinion, leaving them out of the conversation is a big mistake. The large public utilities and the regulations that govern them are huge forces in the energy market and will continue to be so, regardless of where the clean tech revolution takes us.

Additionally, Matthew Dunne of ARPA-E (a subsidiary of the US Department of Energy) spoke about the financial assistance his organization provides to innovators in clean tech. Unfortunately, there are currently no open solicitations for competitive bids, however, he did inform us that ARPA-E does accept unsolicted proposals.

I left with a very real sense that clean tech is an exciting area for disruptive technology and, a very dynamic area of the law due the number of intersecting legal subspecialties it touches.

One of my clients is in the process of entering into a deal with the White House.

Typically, my start-up clients find it very frustrating to try to do business with government agencies. Start-ups and government agencies operate on two very different time scales.

So, it’s a pleasant surprise to learn that the White House is actually much more nimble and flexible than most federal agencies. They understand more about the world my clients live in than any other governmental agency I’ve ever worked with.

And, I must say, the folks who represent the White House are some of the nicest and most reasonable opposing counsel with whom I’ve ever dealt.

Fresh Tomatoes Galore.

After an uncommonly cool summer, we’re finally getting some heat (it’s over 100F outside right now), and the plants are finally starting to produce like mad.

In clockwise order in all of their gorgeous glory above, there’s green zebra, thessoloniki, white oxheart, ananas noir, and sweet horizon.

But wait, there’s more…

…orange russian 117, thessoloniki, top sirloin, green zebra, ananas noir, and green giant.

In fact, now that they have the sun they’ve been waiting for, the plants will wait for no one.  Over the weekend, several of the wooden stakes I’d been using to support the tomato plants broke under the weight of the fruit that seems to grow while you watch it.  Yesterday, in an effort to limit my chores, after picking all of the cracked tomatoes for gazpacho, I picked only cucumbers and white oxhearts:

With the addition of time, heat, spices and acid these became a lovely golden rosemary tomato sauce and pickles.

And now, I just have to come up with a plan for the remaining hundred or so pounds of ripe tomatoes that need attention.

It’s a good problem to have!