Technology has impacted the legal field in a variety of ways. Firms are implementing technology solutions to help them run their practices.
At the most basic level, a tech lawyer is an attorney that deals with clients who produce or manage technology products and services.
You’re a tech lawyer if you work as an attorney for a financial institution and advise the firm on matters of compliance. Have you had to develop or review a privacy policy for a client’s website? You’re a tech lawyer.
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A great example of this is the Americans with Disabilities Act. It was passed in 1990. At that time, the internet was a network used b government and educational institutions.
The legislation has been revised a few times since then, but one area that remains a legal mystery is whether or not websites are considered to be public spaces. More of these cases are turning into lawsuits and case law has been inconsistent.
The one thing that makes being a tech lawyer exciting and challenging is that the field is continuously evolving and changing. You need to stay on your toes if you go this route in your legal career.
How Can Technology Help Law Firms?
You don’t need to be a computer scientist to be a tech lawyer. However, there are certain skills that are better in some situations than others. You want to honestly assess your strengths and then find the specialization that best fits your skills.
Yes, there are specializations within the specializations of technology law. Technology is broad, and you want to narrow down to an area of law that plays to your strengths. Here are a few areas to explore.
Legal engineers is another way to refer to tech lawyers. Legal engineers are experts in data governance. They take the complexities around data privacy laws and regulations and work with the IT team to make sure that the company is compliant.
Information Technology Lawyer
Intellectual property is a big area for tech companies. Companies want to have an attorney that will protect their intellectual property from theft and knockoffs drowning the market. Canon just won a lawsuit against counterfeiters selling knockoff batteries on eBay.
The General Data Protection Regulation that was passed by the European Union requires that companies that target a European audience comply with the regulation.
In the U.S., states are beginning to pass their own data privacy laws and regulations. This will make compliance for any firm incredibly frustrating and complex.
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Your job as an international tech lawyer is to stay up to date with tech laws around the world and understand how they impact your client.
For example, the financial and healthcare sectors have their own regulations for data privacy. You could become a specialist within a certain industry.
State governments are contending that many of these contractors are actually employees. California’s new law just went into effect and we’re just beginning to see the implications of that law.
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You’ll need to advise companies whether or not their staff should be classified as employees or how they should work with contractors.
In a sense, there are high expectations from your clients to make sure that your own IT infrastructure is efficient and secure. It’s part of the process to build trust and to show that you understand technology issues well.
As your practice and reputation grow as a tech lawyer, you may become a target yourself for cyberattacks. You have to be on guard and make sure that your practice is protected. A data breach of any kind could be damaging and difficult to recover from.
Technology Lawyers & Attorneys
There are a lot of exciting specializations in the legal field. One of the emerging specializations is to become a tech lawyer.
A tech lawyer can help companies across many different industries stay within compliance with data privacy regulations, which are always changing. They can also help protect intellectual property, mediate, and advise clients on employee classification issues.
Katherine Bishop is a staff writer for Attorney at Law Magazine. She has been a writer with the publication for more than four years. She also writes for Real Estate Agent Magazine.
Intellectual Property & Information Technology Law Section
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This website uses additional cookies that mainly assist with our marketing efforts. They are not required for the site to work. These services include but are not limited to Hotjar, Ad scripts, and Google Analytics.Michelle Knoop, associate: At Goodwin, we have a broad technology practice that covers everything from day-to-day corporate, employment, intellectual property, and securities work to larger transactions such as financings, tender offers, mergers and acquisitions, litigation, and public company work. We can assist with everything in a technology company’s legal lifecycle.
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Josh Eisenson, associate: Goodwin’s Technology practice group specializes in working with cutting edge technology companies and helping them achieve their goal of turning their application of knowledge in the pursuit of innovation into viable operating companies. Generally, the Technology practice focuses on general corporate and securities, M&A, capital markets, IP and strategic transactional matters. However, we also work extremely closely with our tax, labor and employment, executive compensation, real estate and several other colleagues in order to provide a one stop shop solution for clients in developing their businesses.
Dane Patterson, associate: The core practice areas in the technology sector include general corporate, venture capital, growth equity, M&A and capital markets. Our Technology Companies practice also touches upon all specialty areas, including executive compensation, tax, IP litigation and intellectual property transaction + strategies, antitrust, and financial regulatory.
DP: Yes, Goodwin definitely has a focus on the emerging companies practice. We also have specific groups dedicated to Tech M&A and Tech Capital Markets.
Becoming A Technology Lawyer
MK : Goodwin specializes in providing full-service guidance for a technology company through its entire lifecycle. For example, I have a broad practice where I advise companies from pre-formation strategy through formation, general day-to-day matters, funding, and ultimately acquisition or IPO. I coordinate with experts in our technology group who specialize in employment, intellectual property, commercial agreements, tax, merger and acquisitions, and capital market (i.e., IPOs, direct listing, and other public company work). Given our depth of knowledge in technology companies, we also have great expertise in advising venture capital firms in their investment into technology companies.
JE: We are lifecycle lawyers – we work with companies from the earliest stages (incorporation and pre-seed financing) to the later stages (various transactional events) and ultimate exit. We pride ourselves on being a full-service firm, meaning that we are both legal counsel and strategic business advisors to our clients, who are often founders, c-suite executives and venture investors.
MK : The level of collaboration among the parties is very different between non-contentious and litigious work for technology companies. On the corporate (non-contentious) side, in a Series A financing, the company and the investor are ideally looking at a long relationship together stretching through an exit or IPO, and both the founders and investors want to set the company up for success. This unified goal presents a great incentive to work together and to come up with creative solutions that do not damage relationships at the very beginning of the company’s journey. However, often in litigious work the relationship has already been damaged and the parties have conflicting goals that make it much harder to work together. On the corporate side, I enjoy my role as an advisor and collaborative problem solver.
What Does An Information Technology Lawyer Do?
JE : As tech lawyers, we collaborate with companies and their founders to convert their dreams into reality. On the corporate side, we get to understand the team’s goals, and work with all parties involved to find a unified arrangement. As lawyers, in addition to ensuring that the business deal has been captured in the legal documentation, our goal responsibility is to consider all possible scenarios and solve for them. In contrast, litigious work helps protect the company from forces that practically have the potential to undermine the progress and development of the company. Non-contentious work for the technology sectors is like playing offense for the company, while litigious work deals more with defensive strategies and getting rid of or minimizing any obstacles and liabilities that the company may face to achieve success.
DP: Non-contentious matters cover the deal and transactional work. It includes helping our clients across a variety of day-to-day legal matters outside of litigation.
We often work closer with the founders of some of these startups than we would for a more mature company. The issues that we face working with technology clients are unique to its particular industry vertical.
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MK: Given the breath of the Goodwin platform and the number of deals that Goodwin attorneys handle and number of board meetings that we attend, we are able to see trends emerging ahead of players who
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