“Every person I work with has a different philosophy on how they want to approach things.”

Hannah is a solo practitioner, providing legal services to freelancers and small businesses, focusing on design and other creative industries. She provides support to folks looking to begin their own businesses, as well as those who are most established, with contract drafting, LLC formation, and trademark work. She previously worked in the legal tech sector.

One of your practice's specialties is working with creatives. How did that start?

I used to work for a company that provides specialized software to lawyers, so I interacted with many solo attorneys and small firms and was able to see all the different ways you could be a lawyer.

There were a couple of people to whom I gravitated, including lawyers who focused on creative industries and professionals. So when I was thinking about where to position myself, that was already an area I was interested in. The legal and creative worlds have such an essential relationship but are often speaking different languages. I saw a gap and thought it would be a good place to start.

Did working with so many people in the creative arts change how you approach your practice?

Yes, it definitely framed how I set things up and think about things. Creatives have a different perspective on legal work than, let's say, a tech startup. They're more comfortable with longer documents, technical jargon, and more legalese. Creatives have a lot more leeway, and every person I work with has a different philosophy on how they want to approach things.

That approach shows in the language I use. When I was working for the software company, interacting with all kinds of different lawyers, I could critique their language related to pricing and transparency. Those two things always stood out to me. If someone published prices on their website, I was impressed because there are a lot of people with horror stories of racking up billable hours.

If you publish your flat-fee pricing, there's a chance you'll do so much work for it, or sometimes less. But it's still something I really value. The transparency is worth the risk. I want people to know what they're getting and not feel like they're going to get nickel and dimed, and being super transparent about what I can and can't do as their lawyer is essential. That's the core of my practice: being very, very open with people.

Is there a generational shift in how lawyers are communicating?

Giant corporations will always stick with their long-winded documents heavy on legalese, because in some industries the transactions are so complex and that kind of language is actually helpful.

For smaller practitioners and clients, there's not a giant shift but at least a small shift to a more understandable plain English approach to language. The goal should be that everyone actually understands the document, the legal terms, and what they're signing up for. But I doubt legalese will go away altogether.

“Fifteen years ago, it was the province of lawyers, movie studios, and book publishers. Now, regular people talk about it casually at dinner parties.”

You have a lot of experience with intellectual property; what's the general health report of IP in America?

People are becoming aware of and interacting with intellectual property frameworks in ways we've never seen. Fifteen years ago, it was the province of lawyers, movie studios, and book publishers. Now, regular people talk about it casually at dinner parties.

Of course, people have been creating intellectual property forever, but legal frameworks like trademark applications and infringements pose more of a barrier to people who are starting small businesses and creative ventures. More and more people are interacting with that legal interface, not just corporations.

IP's elevation in business is also inviting people to push the boundaries of intellectual property law. I recently saw a cool book about bootlegging as a creative practice from the artist-run space Secret Riso Club in Ridgewood. Many artists are interested in more of a DIY approach to everything, so it shows how IP enforcement can only go so far until it gets interrogated.

What's a positive way Artificial Intelligence will help the law?

I'm an aspiring Luddite, so I'm probably not the right person to ask, but I have had some experience with tools that will sift through the mountains of very dense legal reading. And there are applications we'll start seeing very soon.

For example, in trademark work, there's something called an office action. It's essentially submitting a formal document to a relevant intellectual property office as part of registering a trademark for your company. Writing those responses can often require going through many applications and cases. AI can be helpful as a time saver on those.

My experience so far is that many people don't yet know how they will use AI. It still feels hypothetical even though we see more and more examples. It hasn't palpably touched our daily lives yet.

Give us a recommended horror movie from the last three years.

I really like The Substance, they committed so hard to the vision of that movie. Talk To Me was quite scary. My love for horror has grown over the years. It's the one genre I'll always go to the theater for.

It elicits some endorphins and feelings within me that other categories of movies are more hit-and-miss. I like how broad the genre can be as well. You can go camp or body horror or social commentary; it's just a genre that always keeps me on my toes.

Do you have a current writer, magazine, or book you'd recommend?

I've been trying to read more. I read all day for work and sometimes struggle to read recreationally. I just got a subscription to the New York Review of Architecture, the print publication they put out, and I've been enjoying that. Getting a physical thing in the mail is special, especially when it's filled with long-form, New York-based architecture and culture articles.

Hannah Samendinger