Law offices of Gregory Rutchik

Gregory Rutchik is a West Hollywood-based transactional lawyer with more than 25 years of transactional law experience and a former litigator. I have been licensed to practice since 1993.

I work with family offices, real estate investors of multi-family, cybersecurity services firms, cloud computing established tech founders and niche consultancies for example.

Most clients have a specific transaction they need help with, but some clients hire me to be their outside general counsel and want me to learn their business, identify risks and opportunities and help them with strategy.

What makes me different is that if I take on a client I want to know your business plan and will ask you for permission to understand your assumptions and to test them. My primary goal is to help clients close their transaction and to increase margin and revenue.

Risk perspective: Because I litigated in Federal Court for more than 15 years, my perspective is how a particular issue, provision, approach might play out in litigation. I have been up against the largest firms – even as a solo – and know from experience how warranties, indemnities and limitations and liability provisions (e.g. the risk allocation provisions) play out in front of judges, mediators and arbitrators (as well as juries).

Background: I started in 1994 at Ostrolenk Faber in New York as a copyright and patent litigator. I joined Cooley Godward LLP, in their technology transaction group, in Palo Alto at the end of 1997 at the early part of the growth of Internet based businesses. Cooley represented the big boys, Silicon Valley venture backed, pre-ipo start ups as well as established, large public companies. I got incredible training on all aspects of deal making for tech based companies and their founders. I went in-house twice – one went IPO (Loudcloud) and the other tried but did not (Noosh). In 2001, I hung my own shingle initially only to deal work but quickly took on litigation work – at first with the help of other colleagues. There is no question that being a well trained transactional lawyer helped me on even my first litigation which dealt with the limitation of liability provision in a telecom equipment contract dispute. After more than 20 years, I know that a balance of transaction and litigation skills has made me a more well-rounded lawyer. More on my background.