

Ask HN: Who are the most innovative law firms/lawyers for startups in the US? - hendler

After incubation, this matters more. Examples<p>* becoming a B corp.<p>* creative equity strategies<p>* crowdfunding risk mitigation<p>* intellectual property and building value while being against software patents, traditional copyright,  closed source , etc
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callmevlad
One thing I learned after meeting with a bunch of top firms in the Silicon
Valley (Fenwick&West, Orrick, Cooley, Silicon Legal Strategy) is that
"innovative" and "creative" legal strategies can be much more expensive and
can even hurt you in the critical initial growth period. If your goal is to
raise money from investors, your best (and cheapest) bet is to follow
established conventions and standard terms. When you get to be much bigger
(e.g. Facebook, Dropbox), that's when more creative strategies may be needed
(e.g. Facebook's strategy to prevent employees from selling stock prior to
IPO).

In regards to IP, it's always a cost vs benefit tradeoff. It was quite
refreshing to hear pretty much every partner we spoke to say "just focus on
building something awesome and focus on the hard legal stuff later," instead
of pushing us down the (more beneficial to them in the short term) path of
securing patents, etc.

