Written by Sarah Kellogg
Illustration by Rene Stringfellow
Technology law has never been tidy. The rise of AI companies has made it messier, more urgent, and more human. Questions that used to live safely in seminars now land on desks as real contracts, investigations, and products. Who is accountable when an algorithm discriminates? How do you regulate a model that changes after deployment? What does consent mean when data is scraped on a planetary scale?
At GW Law, students don’t just study these questions from a safe distance—they work them. They practice them. They learn to hold a client’s vision in one hand and the public’s trust in the other, and to understand that both belong in the room.
That approach echoes through the careers of alumni working across intellectual property, artificial intelligence, autonomous vehicles, and tech entrepreneurship. Graduates don’t leave with a single fixed playbook for “technology law.” They leave with something more adaptable: a way to think inside constant change without being swallowed by it.
“Technology law isn’t a static practice area,” said Dean Dayna Bowen Matthew. “It’s a moving target. Our job is to graduate lawyers who know how to think as the target moves and who can adapt without losing their grounding in justice and the rule of law.”
GW Law’s location in Washington, D.C., is not just a backdrop for that mission; it’s part of the curriculum. Few places expose students so directly to the collision between law and technology. In a city where agencies draft rules that shape global markets and courts decide cases that redraw the boundaries of privacy, speech, and tech competition, GW students learn to think in two directions at once: up close and wide out. They see how legal principles become policy, how policy becomes enforcement, and how enforcement becomes precedent.
In classrooms and clinics, externships with regulators and in-house teams, and late-night study groups parsing the newest technology policy memo, students encounter the terrain of careers that will stretch across technologies not yet imagined. Professors push them deeper. Peers sharpen their arguments. And the school’s practical, cross-disciplinary culture keeps legal thinking tethered to real-world stakes. Again and again, graduates describe a hard-won steadiness emanating from their time at GW Law: the ability to stand inside change, not just chase it; to ask the right questions early, to spot risks that don’t show up in a pitch deck, and to help build rules for a world that is still being invented. These proficiencies show up differently in each career—yet the through-line is unmistakable.
Laying the Foundation for a Startup Life
Eric Malis, JD '10, believes that even though law school may not necessarily be a traditional path to a tech career, GW Law gave him a foundational way of thinking and working that helps him thrive in today’s startup world. “I had a great experience at GW Law,” said Malis, co-founder and partner of Talis Partners, LLP, and general counsel and chief of staff at Lincode Labs Inc. “It was hard work. It was non-stop. It was a chance to stretch myself to the limits, to see what’s possible.” It was a stint in sales and marketing that brought him to GW Law. He noticed how one of his colleagues, who was both a lawyer and an executive, consistently cut through cross-functional noise. That stuck with him, sparking an interest in law school and, all these years later, has become a model for how he approaches technology work now.
“He had a way of quickly understanding different issues and synthesizing what was at stake to get people aligned. There’s something about how lawyers can break down complex concepts into their critical components and then convey them that’s always excited me,” said Malis. Malis went all in during law school—extracurriculars like law review, moot court, mock trial; student organizations like the SBA and Street Law; internships at Linklaters, the Court of Federal Claims, and the White House. He says the intensity and diversity of those experiences shaped his confidence to enter the rapidly changing world of startups and technology.
His work as a student senator with the SBA and teacher and VP of Street Law sparked an interest in interpreting and explaining the law to real people under real pressure. “Whether you’re helping a group of students form a new organization [with the SBA], or teaching at-risk youth about law, government, and civics [with Street Law], you have to explain complex rules to real humans with empathy and clarity, while keeping the argument sharp,” he said.
'I had a great experience at GW Law. It was hard work. It was non-stop. It was a chance to stretch myself to the limits, to see what’s possible.'
Eric Malis
JD '10
These experiences weren’t a detour from his future in technology. They were preparing him for it. The most effective tech lawyers don’t just parse contracts, he noted. They translate competing values to people with different stakes.
Malis’s path to Silicon Valley ran from a federal clerkship in New York, to Kirkland & Ellis in D.C., to Cooley in California, and finally into the startup bloodstream. He co-founded his hybrid legal strategy firm Talis Partners to work more closely with founders rather than just pointing out risks from the sidelines.
“I like to roll up my sleeves and work with smart people in more of an operational role,” he said. While managing Talis Partners, Malis also ran a startup bootcamp program at BootUP Ventures, taught legal research and writing at Santa Clara University Law School, and designed and taught an entrepreneurship course called “Launching a Startup” at Menlo College.
Now, as general counsel and chief of staff at Lincode, his days move at startup speed—negotiating enterprise contracts, restructuring operational processes, and steering go-to-market decisions. The job requires precision in finding the core problem, aligning the team around it, and keeping momentum without cutting corners.
“That is GW Law’s fingerprints on my tech life,” Malis said. “It’s not because of a single course in technology but rather a legal discipline and a habit of breaking through chaos to identify realistic choices and make better decisions.”
Shaped by GW Law, Leading in Tech
GW Law provided Doug Luftman, JD '97, with a durable legal foundation for practicing in the ever-accelerating technology industry, building on his electrical engineering degree from UCLA and a lifelong passion for technology.
The law school stood out because it offered him an “element of combining law with business and technology,” a blend that matched his background and ambitions. It was a training ground where instructors and guest lecturers brought multiple perspectives into the classroom.
“It wasn’t just you having amazing professors,” he recalls, “but also learning from legal professionals and government officials who taught us how the law influences industry.” He came to value GW Law’s “cross disciplinary approach,” and the expectation of applying analytical legal skills to accelerate the speed of business.
That pragmatic emphasis became increasingly relevant as technology continued to transform the world. Luftman noted that, similar to his experience at GW, recent graduates “hit the ground running by coming out of GW with not only a deep understanding of the law, but also a pragmatic approach to handling the ever-changing legal questions that the tech industry, such as AI, raises.”
'My professional story reads like a blueprint for why GW Law’s
graduates succeed in roles where law has to keep pace with the speed of innovation.'
Doug Luftman
JD '97
Over 25 years, Luftman has served as a legal executive at a who’s who of companies from Intel to Palm to DocuSign. He evolved from leading intellectual property groups to serving as a general counsel for over half a dozen technology startups. He enjoys working in-house because it keeps him close to the entrepreneurial energy of business where “you first understand the company, so that you then can apply the law as an accelerant to their business.”
That same instinct acquired in law school now powers his latest venture, Velocity Edge Advisors, a modular, on-demand legal department he co-founded with a friend. The firm provides unique turn-key legal services to more than 100 companies—an impressive result for a firm that is barely six months old.
“My professional story reads like a blueprint for why GW Law’s graduates succeed in roles where law has to keep pace with the speed of innovation,” said Luftman. “I feel lucky to have attended GW Law where the school prepared me for being able to make a real difference in the world.”
The Crossroads of Law and Technology
Christopher Nalevanko, JD '07, still laughs when he thinks about the first time GW Law showed up in his Zoox life: not in a courtroom or a patent office, but in a quiet conference room with engineers and executives—translating both worlds at once.
“I went to GW primarily because of its status in the IP world,” said Nalevanko, general counsel of Zoox, the maker of self-driving electric robotaxis. “Aside from my electrical engineering degree, I use my law degree every day.”
GW Law’s IP focus was never abstract. At GW, he was trained to think like a technologist while arguing like a lawyer. He remembers learning to “blend the legal and technical worlds,” a discipline he relies on daily inside a company building AI-driven autonomous vehicles. Those skills followed him west.
'GW gave me a bilingualism to operate at the crossroads of law
and technology. It gave me the skills to help a company build what comes next.'
Christopher Nalevanko
JD '07
“At Zoox, my CEO doesn’t just want my legal advice. He wants my overall advice,” he said. “GW’s business-friendly culture helped me step into that wider role. I feel like GW Law wasn’t afraid of business and it opened up more opportunities to me.”
After law school, he learned the stickiest issues in tech are rarely purely legal. They’re strategic: “Did that make sense from a business perspective?” or “Why are we doing this?” That is exactly the terrain AI and autonomous systems create—where compliance, ethics, product design, and commercial goals intersect.
When Zoox needed help beyond patents—supply-chain contracts, platform partnerships, compliance for a fleet without steering wheels—Nalevanko’s approach was to learn the underlying technology first, then build agreements around reality. The contracts were “incredibly technology focused,” he noted, and understanding the parts and their implications was mandatory. If Nalevanko could pull today’s students aside in the hallways of Lerner or in the IP clinic, his advice would sound like a syllabus for the future: take AI and privacy courses because “everything is moving” so fast; add business classes you don’t think you need yet; and don’t skip the mediation and conflict-resolution training GW Law excels at.
“In a tech company, a GC is an advisor, right or wrong,” said Nalevanko, adding that he didn’t realize that when he was in law school. “GW gave me a bilingualism to operate at the crossroads of law and technology. It gave me the skills to help a company build what comes next.”
Translating Complexity for the AI Age
Mansi Shah, JD ’06, remembers the light in the GW Law Library at midnight—how it pooled on casebooks the way a debugger’s glow lands on stubborn code. Before law school, no one in her Model UN circle would believe she fell hard for computer science and mastered the art of coding, but she did.
So, GW Law turned out to be a deliberate pivot from coding, but not a retreat. She came to Washington, D.C., after the dotcom bust, with a defense industry job in hand and an itch to keep learning. A high school teacher, her love of argument as much as algorithms nudged her toward a career in patent law, and she chose GW Law because of its reputation in IP law.
That choice let her weave together her two instincts—how systems work and how people are at the center of any system—into one career. She sees herself as a “translator for tech” because that is how she built value while litigating technology cases.
“I felt my gift was the ability to translate really complex technology for either a judge or a jury,” said Shah, who after decades in big firms founded Lockwood AI in 2025. While at GW Law, during an internship with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office where she worked with patent judges, her translation skills took root. The judges relied on her to parse the technology and apply the law. She would hone that skill as her career progressed, becoming adept at explaining complex issues in a way a broad audience could understand.
That clarity is why tech clients trust her now, especially in the AI era. When AI began flooding boardrooms, Shah was neither dazzled nor dismissive. She’d already lived through technology revolutions and knew how law lags, especially with a fast-moving target.
“Everything’s changing so quickly,” said Shah. “The speed is precisely why lawyers can’t pretend the shift is optional. They need to be ready.”
Her approach to generative AI is the same one law schools have applied during the evolution of research from books to online databases: use the tool, then “double check the work.” It’s old training with new stakes—shepardizing not just cases but the credibility of the systems themselves.
When Shah left Big Law—partly energized, partly unsettled—she felt AI raised questions too large to ignore about how lawyers will practice in the future, especially how they will develop judgment and value labor. She jokes that she hopes super-intelligence treats humanity like “Hollywood’s dog,” pampered and safe, but the humor still carries real urgency.
Shah has become an evangelist of sorts in GenAI, educating business leaders about the opportunities ahead and how best to leverage them. She also authored The Monsoon Method: Rainmaking Redefined, a business development framework she crafted after years of mentoring partners and proving her client development skills.
'Everything’s changing so quickly. The speed is precisely why lawyers can’t pretend the shift is optional. They need to be ready.'
Mansi Shah
JD '06
Today, she speaks on the topic of her book, while also building out Lockwood AI, a consultancy focused on advising nonprofits on AI fluency, still guided by a conviction that law is a human craft but that technology will change how we practice it.
“All of the skills you learn in law school will apply,” Shah said. “They will just apply in a different way than they did yesterday.”
Keeping Pace With the Future
Across these careers, a clear pattern emerges: Today’s technology lawyers operate at the crossroads of law, business, engineering, and rapid innovation. Whether advising on autonomous systems, guiding AI companies, or translating complex technical concepts for diverse audiences, their work requires agility, strategic thinking, and the ability to build legal structures around technologies that evolve faster than traditional doctrine.
What unites their paths is the formative role GW Law played in shaping this interdisciplinary fluency. The law school’s practical, cross-disciplinary approach trained students to manage uncertainty and connect legal analysis to real-world product and business considerations. Rather than offering a static playbook, GW Law prepares its graduates to think critically and adapt as the technological landscape shifts.
“Technologies like AI are powerful precisely because they scale decisions,” said Dean Matthew. “That means the consequences scale, too. We train our students to ask hard questions about accountability before harm becomes inevitable. We can’t predict every technology our graduates will face, but we can give them something more enduring: judgment, fluency, and the courage to lead when the law hasn’t caught up yet. We can help them keep pace with the future.”