Attorney & Mediator
A counselor for what you're building.
An advocate for what you've built.
Entertainment, intellectual property, corporate matters, and conflict resolution, for artists, entrepreneurs, nonprofits, and family businesses. From a lawyer who spent twenty years building companies and leading teams before law school.
Ways to Work Together
Sometimes you need counsel, other times a mediator.
Project Counsel
Corporate and transactional matters, intellectual property, and entertainment work, for companies, artists, producers, and the firms that refer them.
- Contract, agreement, and term sheet review, drafting, and negotiation
- Corporate transactions, governance, and entity formation
- Demand letters, cease-and-desist correspondence, and responses to them
- Trademark enforcement and coexistence agreements
- Copyright terminations and rights recovery
- Royalty disputes, accounting demands, and label and publisher negotiations
- Producer, executive producer, and collaboration agreements
- Founder arrangements, equity questions, and separation documentation
- Nonprofit governance, bylaws, board policies, and grant agreements
Mediation
A structured, generally confidential process for resolving disputes without years of litigation, for when the relationship, the timeline, or the cost matters more than winning in court.
- Creative and entertainment disputes: credits, splits, partnerships
- Co-founder, investor, and partnership friction
- Family business and succession conflicts
- Nonprofit board disputes and executive transitions
- Contract and commercial disputes
- Workplace and organizational conflict
- Pre-litigation resolution and settlement facilitation
What I Handle
Entertainment, intellectual property, and business matters.
Demand letters and responses
Enforcing payment, stopping infringement, or answering a demand someone has sent you.Contracts and term sheets
Review, drafting, and negotiation across vendor, client, and investment documents, including SAFEs, notes, and priced rounds.Corporate transactions
Mergers, reorganizations, and financings, including conversions, equity plan amendments, and board and stockholder consents.Entity formation and governance
Operating agreements, founder and equity arrangements, and corporate housekeeping for closely held companies.Founder and partnership conflict
Governance restructuring, equity questions, and separation documentation when a partnership changes.Trademark enforcement and coexistence
Cease-and-desist strategy and correspondence, and negotiated coexistence agreements where two owners can share a market.Copyright terminations under §203
Preparing, serving, and recording notices to recapture rights granted decades earlier.Royalty and accounting demands
Pursuing unpaid royalties, compelling accountings, and addressing the status of masters and other rights.Publishing and administration deals
Term, wind-down, retained rights, and post-term collections, including exits from international administration agreements.Producer and collaboration agreements
Allocating creative control, credit, ownership, and investment terms before the work starts.Nonprofit governance
Bylaws, board and conflict-of-interest policies, fiscal sponsorship, grant agreements, and executive transitions.About
I came to law the long way, and it's my greatest asset.
Before I was an attorney, I spent two decades as an entrepreneur and operator, building things: a hospitality group where I helped develop and open a dozen venues across North America, a culinary television production company, and teams of people navigating high-pressure environments together. I grew up in my family's restaurant business, where I learned conflict resolution before I could drive.
That matters more than it sounds like it should. I have signed the lease, made the payroll, and been on the wrong end of a contract that didn't say what I thought it said. So when you bring me a deal, I'm not only asking whether it's legally sound. I'm asking whether it works, what it costs you operationally, and what happens to it in eighteen months. I know what it means to live inside the documents I draft.
I practiced at Manatt, Phelps & Phillips on corporate governance, transactional, regulatory, and entertainment finance matters. Today I practice entertainment and intellectual property law alongside boutique firms in California, and mediate for people who want a smarter way through than litigation.
California Attorney
Juris Doctor, Loyola Law School, Los Angeles. First Honors in Contracts and in Ethical Lawyering · Admitted to the State Bar of California · Bar No. 365873
National Firm Experience
Summer Associate (2025) and Associate (2026), Manatt, Phelps & Phillips LLP. Corporate governance, transactions, regulatory, privacy, and entertainment finance
Entertainment & IP Practice
Ongoing counsel work with boutique entertainment and intellectual property firms: music, rights, and creative business matters
Judicial & Public Service
Judicial extern, U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Central District of California · Finance Coordinator and Office Manager on a U.S. Senate campaign
Trained Mediator
Loyola Center for Conflict Resolution & Collaborative Family Law Clinic, mediating divorce, custody, and financial support agreements · Additional mediation training through California Lawyers for the Arts
Entrepreneur & Producer
Co-founder of a restaurant and hospitality group. Helped develop and open a dozen venues across North America · Co-founder and Executive Producer of a culinary television production company with more than 3,000 live shows over sixteen years, 27 regional Emmy nominations, and 4 wins
Also Holds
MS, Nonprofit Management, Northeastern University, plus fifteen years in youth development
BS, Management & Organizational Behavior, NYU Stern School of Business
Certificate in Real Estate, Loyola Marymount University
Professional Certificate in Producing, UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television
Get in Touch
Let's talk.
No pressure — just a conversation about where things stand and how I can help.
I'll be in touch shortly — typically within one business day. Thank you for reaching out.
FAQ
Questions people ask.
Is it too early to call?
Almost never. The best time to reach me is while a deal is still being negotiated, before a letter gets sent, or when something feels off but hasn't broken yet. That's when advice is cheapest and most useful. The first call is 30 minutes, no charge, and carries no obligation: I confirm there's no conflict, work out whether I'm the right person, and point you somewhere better if I'm not.
How do you charge?
Depending on the matter, engagements may be structured as a flat fee, an hourly engagement, or an ongoing counsel arrangement. Scope and fees are confirmed in writing before work begins, and they don't move without your sign-off. Mediation is quoted based on the format and expected preparation.
What's the difference between hiring you as counsel and as a mediator?
As counsel, I represent you — your interests, your leverage, your outcome. As a mediator, I serve as a third-party neutral: I don't represent either side, I don't give either side legal advice, and each party may consult independent counsel. As a matter of my own practice, I don't take both roles in the same dispute, and I'll help you figure out which one your situation calls for.
Do you work with clients outside California?
Often, yes. I'm admitted in California and advise on California-law matters, along with federal trademark and copyright work before the USPTO and Copyright Office, and I work remotely with clients in other locations where that's permitted. Where a matter turns on another jurisdiction's law, it may require local counsel or separate admission. We settle that question before any engagement begins, and I'll tell you plainly which situation you're in.
On the Name
Why "Counsel."
The word is older than the profession. Counsel comes through Old French from the Latin consilium — plan, deliberation, advice, and beneath that from com, "together," and calare, "to summon." To counsel, at the root, is to call people together and think it through. It meant advice given and received for a full two centuries before English ever used it to mean a lawyer.
That older meaning is the one I want. I was a camp counselor for fifteen years before I was legal counsel, and the job hasn't changed as much as the setting has: someone brings you a problem, you sit with it together, and you help them find the way through.
The Family Motto
"Be Smart and Be Good."
It's what my family said. Be smart: protect yourself, know your position, understand the deal. Be good: to the people across from you, in how you move through the world. Everything I do sits between those two instructions, and it turns out they're the only principles that hold up in every kind of conflict.