What I work on
My practice is narrow on purpose. I take on three categories of work, and I quote on every matter in writing before I open a file.
Contracts for technology businesses
I draft and revise SaaS master agreements, AI vendor and data-licensing agreements, channel and reseller agreements, NDAs, founder and equity documents, and the operating documents that sit underneath a venture-backed company. The work is transactional, attorney-supervised, and priced flat. I do not run a contract-mill template service; I sit with the document, read the existing terms against the actual deal, and revise where revision is required.
Demand letters and pre-litigation work
When a contract has been breached, an account has been frozen, or a counterparty is refusing to pay, the first attorney-drafted letter on letterhead frequently resolves the matter without anyone filing a claim. I draft these letters on my own letterhead with the California bar number visible, cite the specific statute or contract provision in play, and serve by certified mail with a tracked copy by email. A larger tier adds a court-ready draft lawsuit or arbitration demand to the package.
Cross-border US-Asia commercial matters
I have operated remotely from Asia for years and serve US clients with operations, suppliers, manufacturers, or customers in the Pacific region. Russian-language and Russian-civil-law context lets me read source documents that an English-only attorney would route to a translator. The work is generally pre-suit: drafting the agreement that frames the cross-border relationship, reviewing the agreement a counterparty proposes, sending an attorney-supervised letter when something goes wrong, and coordinating with local counsel abroad when local counsel is needed.
Background
Education
- Boston University School of Law, Juris Doctor
- Excelsior College, Bachelor of Science
- Far Eastern Federal University, LL.B. (Russia, 1996 to 2000)
Practice history
I have been in continuous practice since 2011, with my work concentrated on transactional contract drafting, demand letters, and California-specific pre-litigation work. I served as outside general counsel for MAXIM INC. from May 2018 through September 2021, handling its day-to-day commercial documents, vendor relationships, licensing questions, and the contract review queue that supported its business operations. Earlier in law school I was a legal intern in Senator Scott Brown's office (April 2010 through August 2010), where I worked on constituent legal correspondence.
Outside of Terms.Law, I have logged 1,867 jobs and over $600,000 in earnings on Upwork as a Top Rated Plus attorney, with a 99 percent job success score across more than a decade. The Upwork profile is public and the reviews can be read in full there. The volume matters less than what it means in practice: I have seen most of the standard contract patterns repeatedly, across industries, and I have seen most of the failure modes that produce a downstream dispute. Pattern recognition is what a counterparty's general counsel is buying when she retains me for a contract review or a demand response.
Why this practice structure
The practice is intentionally solo and intentionally narrow. There is no leverage layer, no junior associate, and no contract paralegal. A client who engages me reaches me directly, and the work product on the deliverable bears my California bar number rather than a firm name. The trade-off is straightforward: a solo practice cannot handle the volume of contested litigation a mid-sized firm can absorb, and I do not pretend to. What it can do, and does well, is concentrated transactional and pre-litigation work where the value of a single attorney reading the document, drafting the letter, or running the negotiation outweighs the value of an institutional bench.
Bar admissions
I am admitted only in California. For matters that are squarely California-law or California-forum, I am the attorney of record. For matters in other state or federal forums, I coordinate with admitted local counsel rather than appear pro hac vice.
Languages and jurisdictional reach
I read, write, and speak English and Russian at native or bilingual level, and hold conversational Spanish. The Russian-language reach is a working-language reach, not a marketing claim. I trained on Russian civil law as an undergraduate at Far Eastern Federal University before moving to United States legal education, which means I can read a Russian-language commercial contract, a Russian arbitration award, or a Russian-language regulatory letter in the original and identify what it says and what it omits.
I operate the practice remotely from Pattaya, Thailand. The arrangement is deliberate. A meaningful share of my client base has operations, supply chain, or counterparties in the Pacific region, and being on Asia time means a demand letter to a Singapore counterparty or a contract review for a manufacturer in Vietnam happens during their business day rather than mine. A generalist California attorney working only Pacific Time loses a full day on every round trip with an Asia-based counterparty; I do not.
The practical effect: a US client with a Korean reseller, a Russian-speaking founder, a Singapore SaaS contract, or a Hong Kong payment-processor problem gets attorney work product without a translator in the loop and without a time-zone delay on every reply. For matters that require court appearance in a non-California forum, I coordinate with admitted local counsel; the cross-border reach does not extend to acting as attorney of record outside California.
How I read for opposing counsel
A general counsel reading this page after she received a demand letter on my letterhead, or a contract redline with my name in the metadata, is the audience I have in mind for this section. The shorthand: I am a California-admitted attorney in continuous practice since 2011 with a documented public record at the State Bar of California, an English-language commercial practice supplemented by working-language Russian and conversational Spanish, and a posted fee schedule that puts each engagement inside a defined written scope. I do not work on contingency, I do not staff matters out to associates I have not introduced you to, and I do not run the kind of practice where a junior makes promises the partner has to walk back.
If you are evaluating a settlement posture or a contract negotiation across the table from me, the predictable points are these: my work product comes with citations to the operative statute or contract provision, my proposals are written and survive your review, and I close scopes cleanly rather than letting them drift into an open-ended engagement. The practice is built for matters that resolve in writing, and most of mine do.
Publications and writing
I write the long-form analysis on the Terms.Law site myself. The two recurring outlets are the Terms.Law Blog for plain-English California legal commentary, and the Insights archive for closer reads on contract drafting choices, AI vendor risk, and payment-processor enforcement patterns. I do not run a separate corporate-marketing newsletter, and I do not delegate the writing to an outside content team.
How to reach me
Send the facts in writing to owner@terms.law. That is the canonical channel for both new-matter inquiries and ongoing client correspondence. Written intake gives you a record you can forward, lets me read the document attachments before I respond, and avoids the synchronous-call coordination that is unnecessary on most matters I take.
Engagement begins only after I have run a conflict check against my open files and sent a written engagement agreement that defines the scope and the fee. No attorney-client relationship is created by emailing me, by reading this page, or by using any of the free tools on the Terms.Law site. The engagement agreement is the operative document.
Send the matter facts
Email is the fastest route. I read every inquiry personally.
Email owner@terms.law