Legal technology moves faster than the rules that govern it. Our attorneys have founded, scaled, and taken legal tech companies public, and we advise the founders building what comes next.
Attorney of the Year — California Lawyers Association Counsel from operators who have run this gauntletUnauthorized practice of law rules vary state by state and were written long before software. Where your product sits on the line between legal information and legal advice shapes your feature set, your marketing, and your risk. It is a design question before it is a legal one.
A product can operate for years before drawing attention from a state bar or attorney general. Building the regulatory record early is far cheaper than assembling a defense after an inquiry arrives.
Privacy obligations, confidentiality expectations, and the question of whether a duty attaches to your users all compound when the data is legal in nature. This shapes architecture, retention, and vendor agreements.
Generative tools have reopened settled questions about advice, supervision, accuracy, and who is accountable when output is wrong. Regulators are actively rethinking the rules, and the firms engaging now are shaping where they land.
The legal problems that stall legal tech companies are rarely ordinary corporate ones. They are questions about what a non-lawyer entity is permitted to do, and they are best answered before the product is built around the wrong assumption.
Where your product falls under each state's unauthorized practice rules, and how to build and market it so the answer stays favorable as you scale.
Entity choice, ownership, and fee-sharing structures for companies operating adjacent to a regulated profession, including alternative business structures.
Privacy compliance for products holding legal information, covering retention, vendor terms, and the confidentiality expectations users bring with them.
Claims substantiation, disclosure, subscription and auto-renewal rules, and the state consumer protection statutes that follow direct-to-consumer legal products.
Responding to state bar inquiries, AG civil investigative demands, and regulatory challenges, with counsel who have been on the receiving end of them before.
Protecting the software, brand, and content that make the product defensible, and clearing the rights questions that come with training data and licensed material.
The companies that get into trouble are rarely the ones that ignored the rules. They are the ones that answered the regulatory question too late to design around it.
Before architecture and before go-to-market, establish where the product sits under UPL and bar advertising rules in the states that matter. That answer constrains everything downstream.
Ownership, fee arrangements, and any attorney relationships need to reflect the regulatory posture from the start. Restructuring later is expensive and sometimes impossible.
What the product tells users about what it is and is not doing is a compliance artifact, not marketing copy. It should be designed alongside the feature, not added afterward.
Retention, access, vendor terms, and security posture are far cheaper to set correctly at the start than to retrofit under a regulator's timeline.
Companies that build relationships with regulators and bar associations ahead of scrutiny consistently fare better than those first heard from through counsel.
Our attorneys have built these companies, defended them, and helped write the playbook the industry uses. Start a conversation with Westwood Law.
Who you would be working with
Legal tech is a small field with a short history, and our attorneys were there for most of it. This is not a practice area we added because the market looked interesting.
Brian founded LegalZoom in 1999, served as CEO through 2007 and Chairman through 2018, and took the company from a startup with minimal outside investment to a Nasdaq listing. He has spent two decades on the regulatory questions legal tech founders face, and serves on the advisory panel for Lawtech UK.
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Ken was Vice President and Deputy General Counsel at LegalZoom, where his job was to keep the company alive through sustained attacks from the legal establishment. He has since served as General Counsel and Chief Industry Officer in legal tech, practiced at Sidley Austin, and was named one of California's ten leading deputy general counsel by the Daily Journal.
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Curt is the firm's Managing Partner and General Counsel and a nationally recognized authority on legal ethics and the business of law. He teaches legal ethics and law firm management as an adjunct professor at DePaul College of Law, and the questions he is best known for, attorney fee splitting and referral fees, are the ones that decide how a legal tech company can share revenue with the lawyers on its platform. He is admitted in ten jurisdictions.
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Mr. Firoozmand was both professional and informative during our consultation. He gave me the clarity I needed to move forward with my situation. Thank you.
Curt helped me so much with just a single phone call! He renewed my trust in attorneys.
Not only was Arya easy to communicate with, incredibly intelligent with how he planned to achieve the goals, but he was also very warm and caring. I really enjoyed working with Arya. Warm, ethical, and intelligent is a great combo!
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