About Hyndman | Law – A Technology Law Practice
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I’m a Canadian tech lawyer – a lawyer practising business law for technology companies and their customers, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. I spent my first 10 years in practice in Toronto, New York and Budapest with two of the largest law firms in Canada, and as a VP and General Counsel of Hotline Communications, one of the original P2P networking software companies. More recently I’ve launched Hyndman | Law, a boutique business law practice serving startups and established technology companies and other knowledge-based businesses, and their customers. Formation to exit; start to finish; financing, operations and mergers and acquisitions – I help my clients with a wide variety of business and tech law needs, including the creation, structuring, negotiation and implementation of technology transactions, and with general e-commerce, internet, technology and other business law matters. I help my clients grow. You can find my practice here, and more about the specific practice areas I serve here.

I’m also a co-founder of the mesh conference, Canada’s Web Conference, a conference that I and some friends started in 2006 to help draw attention to the terrific web community we have in Toronto. mesh is held every year in the spring and has sold out now two years running. You can stay up-to-date with mesh developments here on our blog.

I serve this industry because I’m a lifelong student of technology, and a geek at heart. I admire the relentless inventiveness and optimism of people in IT, and my mission is to help my clients create change with the transformative power of technology, and to provide personalized services to my clients without the distance, formality, and administrative pressures common to large law firms.

More and more I hear that many people in business – and in IT in particular – find the behaviour of large law firms and other professional service providers to be alienating and unresponsive to their business problems. And they’re right – large firms are increasingly gearing themselves to focus only on high dollar value work and their culture and the billing philosophies do not lend themselves to a “roll up your sleeves and help me grow my business” attitude. It seems to be getting more and more difficult for businesses to find advisors who understand the client’s problems, and who genuinely want to help.

But ultimately, we are here for one reason only – to help people solve problems – and often, the only way to do that effectively is to sweep away the formality and the overhead and just get involved. I believe that clients are ready for a change, and I think there is a remarkable opportunity now for sole practitioners and lawyers in small practices who know how to leverage technology, are hands-on people, and want to build enduring, close relationships with their clients.

In my spare time I’m an assiduous blogger, the Board Chair of a non-profit organization that provides supportive housing services to people in need, and I convinced my father-in-law, a retired professor of Medieval Philosophy, to write the Wikipedia entry for “Synderesis”.

This is my personal blog, a journal of my observations about law, the practice of law and developments in technology, business, media and politics. I also often talk to journalists and other members of the media about current events in technology and what lies ahead – you can find references to some of these media appearances here.

You can e-mail me here.