Business and AI counsel for startups, entrepreneurs and growing companies
Alan N. Walter 
Most business owners have given some thought to what will happen to their business when they retire. Far fewer have adequately addressed what happens if they die, become disabled, get divorced or simply decide they no longer want to be in business with their partners. The problem is that a business succession plan is not … Read more
Congratulations to the candidates who won on Tuesday and to the volunteers, donors and voters who carried them there. Races in Texas, Kansas, Iowa, Ohio, Maine and the Carolinas produced results that few predicted a year ago, and several winners made history along the way. Whatever your politics, a high-turnout election peacefully decided is worth … Read more
Artificial intelligence has created a new problem for startups raising money: How do you know the person investing in your company is actually the person they claim to be? That question used to have a relatively straightforward answer. It doesn’t anymore. In January 2024, criminals used AI-generated images, voices and other deception to convince an … Read more
National security is a powerful presidential responsibility. It is not a constitutional blank check. But if Donald Trump attempts to suspend elections or use the military to interfere with them, the real test will be whether the institutions designed to restrain presidential power can act before the damage is done. With the November 2026 midterm … Read more
Most coverage of Trump v. Internal Revenue Service has focused on the president and the $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” that briefly emerged from the settlement. The more durable lesson is about lawyers. When one person controls both the plaintiff and the defendant, the adversarial system loses its usual safeguard, and the only check left is the lawyers’ … Read more
Most companies negotiating an AI contract ask an important question: Who owns the output? But that may not be the question that creates the biggest business risk. A more important question may be: What happens if the AI provider changes the rules? A company can spend months building a critical process around an AI tool, training … Read more
The House passed the Stop Insider Trading Act in July, and the headline was the exemption. The bill bars members of Congress from buying individual stocks, passed 232 to 198 and does not apply to the president or vice president. It reads like Congress deciding the president is above the law. He isn’t. The exemption is narrow, … Read more
This Insight was published as a Bloomberg Law Perspective in October 2026. The Bottom Line The insurance representation in your last technology acquisition was probably accurate. It also may have been worthless. Buyers of AI-enabled companies may be inheriting liabilities they incorrectly believe are insured, and representation and warranty insurance fails to fill the gap. … Read more
You put a noncompete in a contract. You make it five years, cover half the country and add a few restrictions for good measure. Then someone challenges it. Will the court enforce it? Throw it out? Or rewrite it into something reasonable? The answer is: it depends. And increasingly, the answer depends on how unreasonable … Read more
A slight variant of this insight was originally published in the ABA Journal, the flagship magazine of the American Bar Association, in September 2026 as part of its Your Voice series. When I first watched The Prisoner as a teenager, I was captured, in every sense, by its themes and its aesthetics. A secret agent resigns, is gassed in … Read more
If your New Jersey business uses freelancers, consultants or independent contractors, a new interpretation of the state’s worker-classification rules takes effect today. For some businesses, that could make existing contractor relationships harder to defend. New Jersey has used the ABC test to decide whether a worker is an employee or an independent contractor for years. … Read more
This insight first appeared in Bloomberg Law in September 2026 under the title, “DOJ’s OpenAI Copyright Brief Previews AI Licensing’s Future.” The Bottom Line The Department of Justice told a federal judge this month that Congress, not the courts, should decide how artificial intelligence companies pay for the copyrighted material they use to train their … Read more