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. For a California or Washington matter, where I determine it is legally and strategically warranted, I include one draft complaint or arbitration demand for one dispute, expressly marked DRAFT - NOT FILED, within the agreed package fee. Filing, filing fees, service of process, appearances and conducting any court or arbitration proceeding are not included; any pleading or other proceeding paper beyond the one included draft is separately scoped.
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 in California and Washington. For matters that are squarely California-law or Washington-law, or in a California or Washington 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 California Bar, 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.