Ezekiel 22:30 " And I sought a man among them who should build up the wall and stand in the gap before ME for the land, that I should not destroy it but I found none"
“l will be with you and this shall be a sign for you that l have sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain.”
Our confidence is found only in these words: God is with us.
It’s an interesting question. The answer seems to lie in this: The soundness of a person’s mind is a question of fact to be proven by evidence. By the rules of evidence, everyone is presumed to be of sound mind. This means that the burden is on the person who alleges that another is not of sound mind to prove so. Again, by law, it is only the courts which may declare a person to be of unsound mind. A psychiatrist’s report is merely a factor to be considered by the courts in reaching a conclusion. So, technically speaking, it is illegal to refuse to register a person, no matter how “mad” she looks, to vote without going through a “lunacy” proceedings in a court and obtaining a formal court order to that effect. With all this, the EC is better off registering whoever shows up with the requisite information. After all, if she could gather and provide all the required registration information, then, she’s not of a mind so unsound as to make her incapable of doing whatever she wants with the ballot paper - don’t we all do whatever we like with the ballot paper? 😅. Else, one of these days, the Ghana Federation for the Disabled would just haul the EC to court for unlawfully disenfranchising people.
Many people have asked me how to be a tech lawyer. That involves many things and I cannot really tell you much, but from my experience, here’s what I see:
You’re either on the litigation or transactional side.
Litigation - I’m not going to say much about this because litigation is litigation. But there are people who specialize in certain kinds of litigation such as IP, patent litigation.
One I will separate is patent prosecution. These are people who support the filing and grant of a patent. They argue at the USPTO to get a patent granted.
How to get - To be a litigator you have to get admitted to the Bar, and you can specialize as desired. Core patent litigators tend to have science/technical backgrounds.
You do not however need to be an attorney to be a patent prosecutor. You have to be admitted to the patent bar, but I think you need a science/technical background to take the patent bar exams.
Transaction - This is where it gets a little bit tricky.
- Tech transactions. Some people would separate tech and IP transactions but for this purpose I have combined them. This category includes licensing and strategic combinations. They help companies license their IPs and technologies to other companies. They also advise on strategic combinations such as joint ventures.
How to get - become an attorney and have deep understanding of IP, especially US patent law. You’d need to also be good with contracts, and take time to understand the businesses of the clients you’re looking to advise.
- Life sciences. This can be combined with tech trans, depending on the firm. But life sciences lawyers seem to be very specialized and have science backgrounds. They do bio/life sciences transactions (IP, tech), FDA advisory and regulatory, or both.
- Startup attorney. These are at their core corporate lawyers. They advise startups primarily on venture financing and associated corporate issues, especially corporate governance, and day to day corporate issues.
How to get - you have to be immersed in the VC ecosystem. Understand the business, the incentives, the lingua, and the general issues the startups would be concerned about. This is probably one of the easiest practices to learn about from the outside. A good part of the practice use standardized documents. Go to NVCA and read as many standard documents as you can (they have commentaries to aid understanding).
Latham and Watkins also has a very interesting EC/VC course for free on Forage. Check it out.
- Core corporate attorneys. Many startup attorneys are also core corporate attorneys, but some do less of the venture financing practice and focus on tech mergers and acquisitions. This is like any other M&A lawyer but they understand the nuances of the tech companies and the specific issues that would ordinarily arise and how to hedge against them. These deals always have core IP lawyers, so these guys focus primarily on the corporate issues.
How to get - be a good M&A lawyer.
- Data Privacy and Cybersecurity. As the name suggests, they help tech companies navigate their data and cyber security issues. Many of these attorneys are very specialized but a good number of them are also big tech transaction attorneys. Always depends on the firm.
How to get - start by getting an IAPP certification. Then familiarize yourself with California privacy laws and some of the other specialized privacy laws like HIPAA and COPPA.
Bonus - Labor and Employment lawyers. These are not necessarily tech lawyers as they advise on labor and employment across all industries, but it is a huge part of the tech ecosystem.
For clarity, I am a startup attorney so I can- and I am happy to-speak more about that.