A startup lawyer who left to build the platform she always wished existed

I moved to the United States in 2014 to study law at USC. I was learning law and learning it in English at the same time — sitting for the bar exam, there were words on the page I simply didn’t know yet. That is exactly why I relate to founders: legal is a foreign language to them too, even when English is their first one. And a large share of startup founders, including the ones behind many unicorns, are immigrants doing both at once, the way I did.

That experience still shapes how I work with founders. I began my legal career here as an extern to the Honorable Judge Kozinski on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, writing bench memoranda across capital punishment, habeas, bankruptcy, civil, immigration, and environmental law.

From there I moved in-house, first as associate general counsel at Tala, a fintech startup in Santa Monica, where I guided the company through international expansion and built the compliance foundation behind its $10M Series A and $30M Series B, then at Alternate Health Corporation, a healthcare technology company in Venice, California.

I returned to private practice at Ross Law Group, a corporate and securities boutique in New York City, representing investment funds and startups through formation, financings, M&A, and everyday operations. In 2021 I joined Cooley LLP in Palo Alto, the firm synonymous with technology and venture capital, working with high-growth companies from incorporation to exit, including securities matters and token sales.

In 2023 I left Cooley and went out on my own, launching Lawlace, one of the first AI law firms, serving hundreds of startups and investors and growing it to $1.3 million. That was the law firm. In 2025 I started a legal tech company, Lexsy, a venture-backed startup building an always-on embedded GC for founders — and I share what I learn as a content creator for founders.