In the start-up world, legal issues are frequently identified but practical solutions are hard to come by. However, with a little bit of knowledge better decisions can be made early and there are more ways to succeed and fewer ways to fail.

There are many “checklists” for startup legal but most importantly a company must identify:

1) Ownership among founders / employees / investors

2) Entity selection

3) IP protection

4) Employee / Independent Contractor relationships

5) Tax planning

6) What to do when things go wrong

This month Leigh Gill of Immix Law will join YESpdx to present on the fundamentals of start-up law. Leigh started his career in finance and then spent a decade in software development before becoming an attorney. For more information on Leigh, visit www.immixlawgroup.com

As usual, there will be beer and snacks! Event co-sponsored by NedSpace and the Oregon Entrepreneurs Network (OEN).

Join us for a lunchtime session with business litigation attorney Caroline Harris Crowne and special guest speaker, Jason Bolt, entrepreneur and founder of Revant Optics and Society43.

The presentation will cover:

What to expect if your business gets into a lawsuit. Different options for resolving business disputes. What to do when a dispute is brewing.

Bring your questions and your appetite for an interactive and nourishing midday break. Lunch will be provided! Space is limited, so click here and sign up now!

“Attorney” may seem like a four-letter word, but every startup faces legal questions, and it’s always best to have the right structure and protections in place from the outset. This workshop will provide you with a general overview of common startup legal issues, and will help you learn how to translate “legalese” into plain language that you can understand.

You will walk away from this workshop with legal templates you can start using in your business today, including:

• LLC Operating Agreement & Guidelines
• Mutual Nondisclosure Agreement
• Employment Agreement
• Independent Contractor Agreement

You will also get:

• Guidance on whether to choose an LLC vs. corporation
• A better understanding of the difference between employees and independent contractors
• An overview of key legal issues that affect startups
• Answers to basic questions about protecting your IP

Coffee and breakfast snacks provided.

Cost: $60 for OEN members and $125 for non-members.

Register here: http://bit.ly/legal-seminar

The attorneys over at Miller Nash are looking to refine their knowledge in regards to the legal needs of startups here in town.

Along with Oregon Story Board, Miller Nash is hosting a gathering for local entrepreneurs and startups to both gain a better understanding of your needs as well as answer a few of your own questions.

There will be four different attorneys from Miller Nash in the areas of Intellectual Property, Tax and General Business, General Business and Securities, and Employment in attendance.

Space is limited, so register now.

I'm very excited to announce an impromptu May 8 Meetup with three internationally recognized leaders in the NewLaw and LegalTech movements: Cat Moon, Jeena Cho, and Portland's own Alexandra Devendra! 

These forward-looking lawyers will lead a panel discussion ranging from hot topics like the blockchain and AI in legal, to less buzzworthy (but perhaps more important) concepts like what legal teams can learn from the ResponsiveOrg and Holocracy movements, why a meditation practice can help you deliver better client value (and how to start one), how to innovate using the tools of design professionals, and why diversity is the key to achieving better outcomes.

Cat Moon (@inspiredcat) teaches legal design thinking and agile project management at Vanderbilt Law School, her alma mater. She is a contributor to the ABA’s Legal Technology Today blog and writes there and elsewhere about legal technology, blockchain, kanban and agile project management, design thinking, diversity/inclusion in the law, and work/life alignment. Cat also is co-founder, COO and CDO of Legal Alignment, a legal tech startup developing an AI-powered, interoperable platform for legal workflow and project management. She just wrapped up an international conference on Blockchain in the Law and the first Music City Legal Hackathon. 

Jeena Cho (@jeena_cho) is the co-author of The Anxious Lawyer, An 8-Week Guide to a Joyful and Satisfying Law Practice Through Mindfulness and Meditation (ABA). She is a regular contributor to Forbes, Bloomberg and Above the Law where she covers resilience, work/life integration, and wellness in the workplace. She regularly speaks on women's issues, diversity, wellness, productivity, mindfulness and meditation. She also co-founded Shape The Law, an unconference for lawyers, with Alix Devendra and Mary Redzic.

Alix Devendra (@alixdevendra) is an attorney and legal design consultant based here in Portland. She helps lawyers make their work product more effective using typography and other principles of visual communication design. She is the co-author (with Cat Moon) of the forthcoming Designing Your Practice: A Design Thinking Approach to Legal Services. Alix also consults for legal-tech startups, who value her experience in both law practice and design thinking. She travels internationally to speak and facilitate workshops on legal design.

We'll be at a new location this time, BackPedal Brewing at NW 15th and Flanders. They are opening especially for us and their (excellent) beer will be on tap--please plan to support them!

Finally, we're looking to grow this group. Please forward this invitation to anyone you think would be interested in these topics, including listservs or other groups you're a part of.

Let us know if you have any questions; we hope to see you on Monday May 8!

--John & Zac

Hello LIT-Lab PDX!

We're on track for our next Meetup on Tuesday June 20, when we'll be returning to the Jaguar Land Rover incubator for a very special presentation from Amber Hollister, General Counsel of the Oregon State Bar. 

Among other things, Amber provides ethics assistance to Oregon lawyers and others servicing the legal needs of Oregonians. More recently, she has spent the past several months as the Bar's primary contact to the Regulatory Committee of the Futures Task Force of the Bar (the sister committee to the Innovation Task Force that we kicked off here at LIT-Lab back in the fall). 

Both committees of the Futures Task Force are in the process of finalizing their findings and recommendations to present to the Bar's Board of Governors later this month, and Amber and I will both give you all a preview of those recommendations. (Teaser: if adopted, the recommendations should put Oregon at the national forefront of innovative approaches to Access to Justice issues).

Then, Amber will spend a little time talking about the ethics of legal innovation more generally, including plenty of time to answer your questions.

NW Corporate Law is generously providing pizza again this time. Hope you can make it!

Happy New Year Legal Innovators!

We're looking to kick off 2018 with a Feb 8 meetup featuring local legal technology product Tali, a voice-assistant-based time tracking tool for lawyers and other professionals. We'll hear from Matt Volm, one of Tali's creators, to talk about Tali's startup journey so far, what he's learned about working with lawyers, and what advice he has for lawyers and other technologists looking to build legal tech products.

Tali currently works with Amazon Alexa and will be expanding to Microsoft Cortana and Google Assistant later this year. See https://www.telltali.com/ for more.

We're also hoping to spend some time with Andrew Schpak, current president of the Multnomah Bar Association, to talk about a possible Legal-themed Hackathon that the MBA is mulling.

Oh, and there will be Pizza courtesy of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe!

Hope you can make it!

--John

P.S. We're looking for folks to help organize more Legal Innovation Meetups in 2018. If you have an idea for a topic, a speaker, or would be able to help organize a specific session, please let me know!

Hey Legal Innovators:

Join us for our final Meetup of 2018, where we'll feature two Portland-area companies who are using technology and business model innovation to better connect legal consumers with lawyers. We'll be hosted by Text-a-Lawyer and Collective Agency, and our presenters will include Kevin Gillespie of Text-a-Lawyer and Eli Marchbanks of Basic Counsel. Both companies are working to better connect lawyers and clients using a convenient tech-enabled marketplace.

Kevin and Eli will showcase their products and answer questions about their process for building them--should be an interesting and informative evening. Space is limited so be sure to RSVP early.

Hope you can join us!

--John & Zac

You are being watched.

Until recently, most of our personal activities were easy to keep private, and unearthing the details required at least some effort on the part of those seeking our information. Today, however, with the advent of social media and surveillance technologies, along with the movement of many aspects of our lives into the digital realm, our data has become more widely available and more public. Between emails, web searches, phone calls, CCTV cameras, social media posts, and online transactions, we can be tracked by private companies as well as our government.

But, how much of this tracking is even legal?

Cyrus Farivar’s book Habeas Data examines ten pivotal legal cases that have shaped our current rights related to privacy and also explores surveillance tools in use today. He’ll explain how those cases and tools affect our lives in 2019.

Join us for a fascinating trip through legal and privacy history and into the present day to learn how law enforcement agencies and companies can collect and use our private details, often without our knowledge.

Thanks to our sponsors Northwest Academy, KBOO, and Annie Bloom's Books!

We hope to see you there!

Schedule:

6:00 PM: Doors 6:30 PM: Presentation

Speaker bio:

Cyrus [“suh-ROOS”] is an investigative tech reporter at NBC News in San Francisco.

In addition to being a radio producer and author, Cyrus was most recently a senior tech policy reporter at Ars Technica. He was also previously the sci-tech editor and host of “Spectrum” at Deutsche Welle English, Germany’s international broadcaster, from 2010-2012.

Cyrus is the author of multiple books, including Habeas Data (2018) and The Internet of Elsewhere (2011). Praised by The New Yorker, among others, Habeas Data takes a look at legal cases that have had an outsized impact on surveillance law in America. His first book focuses on the history and effects of the Internet on different countries around the world.

In 2017, Cyrus won the Technology Reporting award with Joe Mullin from the Society of Professional Journalists, Northern California Chapter for their August 2016 story: “Stealing bitcoins with badges: How Silk Road’s dirty cops got caught.”

Cyrus has also reported for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, National Public Radio, Public Radio International, The Economist, Wired, The New York Times, Slate, and many others.

He received his B.A. in Political Economy from the University of California, Berkeley and his M.S. from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

By attending this TA3M meeting, you agree to follow our Code of Conduct: https://www.meetup.com/Portlands-Techno-Activism-3rd-Mondays/pages/22681732/Code_of_Conduct/

{short} Code of Conduct Portland's Techno-Activism 3rd Mondays is dedicated to providing an informative and positive experience for everyone who participates in or supports our community, regardless of gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, ability, physical appearance, body size, race, ethnicity, age, religion, socioeconomic status, caste, or creed.

Our events are intended to educate and share information related to technology and activism, and anyone who is there for this purpose is welcome. Because we value the safety and security of our members and strive to have an inclusive community, we do not tolerate harassment of members or event participants in any form.

Audio and video recording are not permitted at meetings without prior approval.

Our Code of Conduct (https://www.meetup.com/Portlands-Techno-Activism-3rd-Mondays/pages/22681732/Code_of_Conduct/) applies to all events run by Portland's TA3M. Please report any incidents to the event organizer.

This month we'll be hosting Scott Schiefelbein, a Managing Director at Deloitte Tax LLP, and to put it mildly, Scott is a tax expert and a technical lead in the region who knows the blockchain.

We recently sat down and had a wide-ranging discussion; one of the areas most interesting and timely are the conditions and potential future outcomes related to the impacts of regulation at the Federal level, but especially the diverse set of circumstances materializing around US State-level tax regulations.