Derrick works with Jackson Kelly to engage Pittsburgh's tech sector with the law firm. Derrick and the firm have a unique approach to help tech companies of all sizes, especially startups. Derrick and the firm have been providing free legal clinics and advisory services across the ecosystem. Derrick gets tech and the importance of having a solid legal footing.
Transcription:
So I'm guaranteeing everybody today double your money back. If you do you don't have a good time and when Derrick Maultsby Jr. will be giving you that money back so I don't have the money. I'm so I'm so excited for today's interview we're talking to Derrick Maultsby from Jackson Kelly. Derrick is such a good dude, I got to know him over the past, I guess a year and a half or so when they were camping out in the Pittsburgh technology Council's Office and to get things kicked off. I'm Jonathan Kersting, with the Pittsburgh Tech Council, of course hanging out with Comcast to bring you our summer of 50 Pittsburgh tech stories. And I'm trying to tell the cool stories in Pittsburgh stories you may not hear about. And I think Derek's one of those cool dudes that you may not know about yet. But you're gonna be hearing about him because he's on the scene when it comes to all things legal and tech. Derek, thanks for hanging out with me today. I do appreciate it.
Yeah, no, thanks for having me. I'm excited. This is an awesome you know, series that you and the tech Council and Comcast put together and raising awareness about a really big issue. And hopefully we can, you know, through this series provide more equity in access to technology to, you know, inner city schools, inner city children and how to bridge that gap.
That's what it's all about. And that's why I'm telling everyone you're listening or watching, like go over to beyond the laptops.org. And that's what we're raising money for. It's been a small donation, it can go a long way, because there's it actually blew my brains out as to how many Pittsburgh public school students have new technology solutions whatsoever, like, how are they going to learn like they're going to get left even further behind? That can't deal with that. So I'm like trying to do what we can do on our end to try to get some awareness and raise some money to at least do something for it and keep that momentum rolling. So I just encourage everyone to go and check that out. In the meantime, I want to talk to Derrick because Derrick, I think he's got some great insight on what's happening in Pittsburgh tech sector. I want to know why you decided to become a lawyer. Like I there's many things I want to ask you today. Hey, before we do that, just give us a quick background to yourself and what you're up to right now.
Yeah, no, absolutely. So as you said, I'm with Jackson Kelly. Currently, I am with Jessica Lee's consultant. I'm graduated from Duquesne law school here in Pittsburgh and I'm a Pittsburgh native. I honestly have a really big mouth and that is why I decided to go to law school football in college and you know, wasn't wasn't wasn't in my car to go to the pros. And I asked myself, what else am I good at? Okay, I thought that uh, you know, career, you know, talking was going to be up my alley. So you took all the good jobs in Pittsburgh when it comes to being a host so I had all I always post with me anytime you want or I'll say you need to go to law school. But um, yeah, and, um, you know, during law school, I had the opportunity to kind of break into corporate law and really start to work. With tech companies and tech startups and from their, you know, using my, you know, I'm a millennial and so using kind of my upbringing on technology and leveraging my knowledge of corporate law and sort of the legal obstacles and hurdles that face tech companies and tech startups, I was kind of able to bridge a gap from with some of our more experienced attorneys around around the office and, you know, with tech startups, tech companies and the founders, who, you know, I think there's a huge divide sometimes between point a tech company and a little in a law firm, right, and there's some fears there and as you know, I don't wear a suit. I you know, I big puffer vest, guy t shirt guy. I want I want to be approachable and I really want people to realize that, you know, Jackson Kelly, our tech and data practice, we're here to help them. And first and foremost, and we've, you know, worked with companies now, you know, all along the kind of tech spectrum from start up without Without formation and just the concept all the way to, you know, fortune 500 tech companies. So, we, we have, we have a lot to offer and we've we've had a lot of fun doing it. So it's been a good time. Absolutely. And
I really love the idea that you're making the firm more approachable because I think that is so important because I think people just just, it's just drilled into us to be afraid of lawyers. I think sometimes, you know, saying I mean, right or wrong, whatever it is it I think it's wrong, because what I've learned over my almost I guess, 25 plus years now hanging out in Pittsburgh tech sector is that your legal team becomes like your de facto like, network, man. I mean, they connect you to everybody and anyone, they they really become like the fifth Beatle of your operations in so many ways. And so that's why I think it's so important that you do have a great law firm, but people don't know how to approach them because they think oh, they're stuffy lawyers, like no, they're cool dudes like Derrick and they get it and they want to be helpful. And so I think good idea that like you're not walking around in a suit I think I think twice I saw you in a suit in our office. Remember I told you about it.
The first time you told me you cut my tie, and that's exactly right.
The tie was the tie. And, you know, I definitely I try to ditch the suit as much as I can sometimes I still have to put it on and you got to do it, man. And that's totally cool. Post quarantine. I put a few pounds on. I don't know what pants right now. But, um, no, I really, I really, I really agree with you. And I think you know, the big thing for us, Jackson Kelly. And the one thing I wanted to make sure that we did is I want to I want to reach out to the community. So, um, you know, whether it's working with the tech Council, where we have the tech legal clinic, normally, you know, prior to COVID-19, which is, you know, is our monthly series where we just, you know, kind of hold a q&a and give some free education about different legal hurdles, or it's, you know, whether we give a seminar over at ascender or whether we are, you know, volunteering at alpha lab. or whatever it may be, you know, we just did a presentation with prototype. We're really trying to just get out there and give as much free legal education as possible to the tech community, because I think that it's so powerful, but you don't know what you don't know. And so it's so powerful to be able to give people the tools to at least assess their business plan, their company, their structure, and really be able to say, Okay, well, there might be some problems here. I need to have a further deeper conversation about these issues. And so, you know, for the past two years, we've made a deep commitment to just educating the community becoming a part of the community adding as much value to the community without expecting anything in return. And I think that if until you invest in something, how can those folks trust you and invest in you? And so that's, that's really just been our mission and what guided us.
I really appreciated your approach as I said, as I got to you and Jason your other partner in crime Jason, no hot and the just the idea that you are trying to be into reach out. And the idea that yeah, it's like you're not looking to like score a Quick Client and everything like that. It's like, no, you're literally trying to offer some people on the right track and get them getting started and realize that like you're there whenever it's needed. And one thing I can tell you like I've seen some scary stories over the years where I won't name names here, but there was someone pretty prominent in Pittsburgh tech sector that when they first started up, they were signing some multimillion dollar contracts. Without a real lawyer looking at it. They were having their parents review these contracts. And I'm thinking to myself, Oh, my I remember like literally mixing you shouldn't do that. Like you don't understand the jeopardy. You could be putting yourself into Unity professional. You're reading this stuff. Oh, I talked to Laura. I'm like, No, you want to talk to a lawyer. You're talking about a couple million bucks here. And that just blew my mind. That's the I always say man, when you're in business, you're starting to make money. You're starting to get customers. issues are going to arise that you cannot solve. And you need to have you trusted advisor and that's why I just I just can't say it enough to anyone out there get a frickin good lawyer.
I mean, it's insane. And I think that, you know, the one of the big gaps that we've really focused on trying to bridge is that fear of the bill, right that legal bill. Oh, yeah. The call is a start up when you're bootstrapping things and you're not paying yourself to really think in see the value in reaching out to a law firm and you know, trying to figure out how you're going to pay a lawyer to do things, you know, when you don't have revenue yet, or you know, you're you're kind of trying to approach an issue of cashflow. And so we really tried to do and what we have is it's called the all off Start Menu. from you I literally just say what would Jonathan like and that's that's how I started See, I mean, your mind somewhere there Derek, I dig that. It's the start menu and really what it is it's a menu of legal services. that are kind of the most common, you know, Legal Services a tech startup can need. And we have put a flat rate fee associated with that with that price, nice prices, you know what the price is know exactly what you're doing. You can budget for it, you know exactly what it is. And, you know, legal services aren't cheap. I'm not gonna say that they are.
Couldn't be either. I'm sorry. It's, it's honestly, it's too good to be true, you should really question what you're doing, right? Why is that person charging you that little. But what we tried to do is we are trying to make it more affordable. And we're trying to make it something that can fit within a budget within a business plan. Um, and so for tech startups, we're really trying to focus on ways in which we can work with them to, you know, approach the issue of the legal bill, because I think that is one of the biggest divides between tech startups and law firms and why you get more of what you're talking about, where people are just entering into agreements. They're just launching products, they don't have privacy policies, they don't have anything they're not compliance with that Anything at all.
It's just donating a relative hurt again.
Like they're like, Okay, can you fix this? And we're like, uh, yeah, it's gonna cost you 30 times what it would have cost, it would have been 500 bucks if you would have done this two years ago, dude. Actually, it was it was actually just a conversation that we would have given you for free at the tech legal clinic. But um, you kind of created a mess. And now we have to clean it up. But yeah. That's all part of the education part more out there. And we talked to the more people you can tell about the menu, the more people we can point out little issues that they should be thinking about. Mm hmm. Really, it's just it's all about becoming integrated in the community, which has just been you know, the big thing for us.
Yeah. So one of the things that we've been doing back in the good old days, I got to see you from time to time in the office. You come back and say, Hey, I was just in Philadelphia, you're going to different parts of the country and checking out different tech sectors and hanging out with some of the things that the ecosystem are doing there. I know there were some like some like words and parties and things you were going to what were you seeing outside of Pittsburgh, do you think Pittsburgh Maybe doing?
Yeah, no. So I definitely made sure that over the last two years, I didn't just spend my time in Pittsburgh, I wanted to spend time in Philadelphia and Atlanta in Phoenix, similar ecosystems to the Pittsburgh tech ecosystem, right? They're not it's not Silicon Valley, you know, and but, but those aren't Silicon Valley. I was gonna say, Well, you know, it's gonna do that Silicon Valley, but those places are thriving. Right? And why, you know, why are they thriving when they're, they have a similar I think, makeup to Pittsburgh. And why, you know, in Pittsburgh do we sometimes struggle with different things and I just wanted to kind of get the feel for those ecosystems, what they were doing that we weren't doing and things like that and right, you know, the one thing I'll say that I think Pittsburgh does so well is like in Pittsburgh, you definitely can be connected to anyone, right? You're one it's the one degree of separation if you don't know somebody, like you know, somebody who definitely knows that person in Pittsburgh. And I think that we need to leverage those relationships a lot more and promote people around Pittsburgh a lot better. You know, when I'm in Philadelphia, the community is similar. It's very small tech community. And so those people, they all are lifting each other up. They're all leading each other to investment. You know, they're all doing those types of things. And wow, they have a lot of New Yorkers that come down to invest. And similarly in Atlanta, Atlanta has a lot of Silicon Valley money that comes in to invest. I think that there is money to be had in Pittsburgh, there is investment to be, you know, to be gained in Pittsburgh. We just need to work better, I think to lift other companies up and really tried to, you know, lead lead people to the water and I think we do I think we've done a good job of doing that. I think it needs to kind of amplify a little bit more in some some of those places are having a lot of fun, too. You know, I go to I go to this place. Tell me about some of the parties you were going like, and you're like Pillsbury party like this, and I was like, it's really fun. I mean, I went to a I went, I was in Atlanta, and they had a, you know, pitch, a pitch demo which you have the was in Pittsburgh all the time. Except there was like, it was like a rap battle. There was fun. Right, like, right, walk up music and you know, it was it was fast. It was fun. It was, there was a lot of energy. The crowd was, you know, really engaged. There's feed trucks. I mean, they just made it a great experience. And it just so happened to be that the entertainment was the pitch itself, right. Um, and I thought that was incredible. You know, the companies that were in it traveled from all over the country, I think the company that one was from Cambridge. So you know, that's incredible to have something with that much juice. And you see the same thing in Philadelphia and you see similar things in Phoenix as well. So, I think Pittsburgh's on the right path. I mean, I just think that we've gotten into doing the same thing right over and over and over again. And I think that afraid to change it up or take that next step and evolve a little bit and, you know, tech is there while the tech is for everyone. There are a lot Young people that move here for the tech scene and, you know, they want fun, they want energy, they don't always want to be talked at or a seminar or you know, something like that they wanted one. And I think that the more you can have people meeting each other from, you know, the different companies, you can have somebody from Google hanging out somebody from Uber. I mean, that's, that's only going to lead to better things for the Pittsburgh ecosystem. Who knows? Who knows what those two folks can come up with and spin out right and spin it out right here in Pittsburgh. So absolutely, that's just that's just like some of the things I've recognized and noticed and, you know, Jackson, Kelly, we've really tried to focus on trying to bring some of that energy back here, you know, creating relationships, inviting people into Pittsburgh. You know, Jason and I launched the Pittsburgh tech and data summit, which we wanted to be a little bit different than things that are offered in Pittsburgh. While it's a little more seminar like, which I just talked crap on.
Yeah, come on. Yeah, putting a disco ball on your next date.
On it's focused on bringing you know Bring in individuals from different sectors together and having conversations. I think, in each sector around Pittsburgh, you know, you go to a to a legal conference, you go to a, you know, a business conference, you go to a tech conference, you go to a policy conference, everybody's kind of talking about the same issues and the same hurdles. But they don't know people from the other sectors. And there's no cross pollination in solving those issues. And I think that it's going to take everybody, all the stakeholders for us to solve the issues and moving Pittsburgh forward for tech, especially. And so we focused on bringing different stakeholders together, having these conversations talking about these issues. And the number one, the biggest feedback that I got that I loved was people saying that they made new connections with people they didn't even know existed in Pittsburgh. That's not really what it's about. It's just bringing people together, having new conversations, start having you know, new new ventures start having people coming up with solutions together and really getting after it. I love it. So yeah, like it's I feel like you and Jason and Jackson Kelly been this giant spoon in our ecosystem pot here kind of stirring it up a little bit. I think that's really cool to try to have you be able to stirred up the whole code thing going on. I mean, zooms great and all and we're using it right now, at the same time. It's like, Oh, God, so much of what you're doing just getting people in the room talking with each other. How are you guys managing around that?
I mean, you know, just trying to really continue our mission of education and thought leadership. Yeah, um, you know, I think every organization has had kind of had to move to an online zoom, Microsoft Teams, whatever structure, right? So it's super important, I think, for us to, to not be afraid of that technology, but to utilize that technology. And so like, through this technology, we've been able to actually, I think, do more than we were in person, because we're good, right? And so, you know, we'd haven't had to limit ourselves to just the Pittsburgh ecosystem. While we've been I mean a ton. Like I said, we've done a ton in the Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ecosystem. I think we did a business as usual. The tech council early on, um, we, we just last week did something with prototype. Like I said, we've done something with the center. I just became a mentor with alpha lab. So I'm able to do you know, virtual office hours and things along those lines, cool. I know, across the country, now we're able to, you know, pop in and our other locations where our firm is located and do seminars and webinars and things like that. Um, and it's really helped us in you know, sorry to segue kind of away from Tech a little bit, but it's really helped us in launching our pro bono clinic for black businesses and black entrepreneurs. Oh, that's cool. Yeah, yeah.
I didn't know I did not know that was happening yet because I haven't seen you too damn long. Right. Yeah. So obviously, during this quarantine, you know, things have been very, very rough for the black community. You know, I as a black Man definitely fell into a bit of a depression in which I was just kind of asking myself a lot like, what can we do, right? It's one thing to retweet or tweet something out or, you know, make a statement. You know, it's another thing to go protest and to do something. And I look at myself and I say, well, we have all these resources, right? I mean, we are we as, as Lee in the legal profession, I see us as change agents, somebody people that were given the tools to actually move the needle. And so myself, along with a few other folks, Jason, Ron Jones, Michael Leahy, Sylvia Winston, and you know, our managing partner, Ellen Cappellanti at the firm, we all came to Canada together and I said, you know, we need to bridge this bridge this gap in why black businesses and black entrepreneurs don't necessarily always thrive, you know, they don't always have that lawyer in their family or that person that they can go to, to bounce ideas off of. And as we talked earlier, law firms there's this divide, I think between everyday people and how they view lawyers, they always think that somebody's writing time down or there's a bill or there's, you know, there's a catch. And so I, you know, we came up with the idea to put together a pro bono clinic for black businesses and black entrepreneurs in which you know, if somebody wants if you go to our website, you can find it Jackson, Kelly calm. You fill out a intake waiver intake form, you fill out a waiver that kind of just goes over how the relationship between the firm and the individual is the answer. And then we set up a time to talk and we go over, you know, somebody ever all of the issues somebody has, and we really try to add value for them. That's all How are you guys getting the word out on that?
I think that's one of those deals where like, people need to know about this ad out, you know, so I mean, we've definitely hit social media hard. My ugly face was on wp exci. Oh, come on us and talk about it. And, you know, we've just really every educational kind of forum we have we make sure we plug that at the end We're just trying to get the word out there any way we can really, it's one of those things that one of the reasons that I, you know, I went to law school getting back to that question is it moves the needle, right? Yeah. Right is I want to really move that needle. And I see myself, you know, working obviously, in corporate law, you know, people don't think like, oh, how can you make a difference in court in corporate law, you know, like, you're not doing criminal justice reform or anything like that. But you know, there's so many inequity in the world and that though, there's other areas, you can be helpful.
Oh, there's no, there's so many inequities, I think for black businesses and black entrepreneurs. And if you can create more wealth in the black communities, and you can have more black businesses be successful, and you can have more black entrepreneurs, grow their businesses, well, that's more jobs in these communities, right. And that's how you really can create long term change. And so the firm has made a commitment that this isn't just something we want to kind of focus on right now and then move on from this isn't becoming part of what you got to do day to day, right? Yeah, we want, we really want pro bono clinic to, you know, grow to help all minority business owners, all minority entrepreneurs. We also wanted to help long term, we want this to be something that lasts longer than than even I will be I, you know, I just, I'm a young I'm a young guy, but I want this to last longer than me and my time at the firm. So we really focused on how to make this a foundational thing for the for the law firm. And I think we've helped close to 25 black businesses and black entrepreneurs in the city of Pittsburgh so far. And that's amazing. We had it going for about three weeks now.
That's fantastic. Yeah, so glad you told me about this. Like, I had no idea what was going on. Now. I know I'm gonna help spread the word for you. Because those are some of the things that can really make some substantive changes. I mean, that doesn't really mean success or failure for a business owner to get some of that advice and know they're coming from a trusted place. They're on out to descend you. Yeah, they want you to succeed. And I had so much fun talking today. There I could just get me all pumped up, man. You're going on here in Pittsburgh. I'm so glad I got to tell a little bit of your story, man, because this is it's folks like you. They're making Pittsburgh great. And that's why we're trying to tell the stories of Comcast let people know, man, there's just stuff going on here you may not know about, and things like this pop up. We're getting the word out for you, dude, I love it.
Now, I appreciate that. And I, you know, I appreciate you having me. And I think right now, you know, in, we live in very weird times. And it's a time that we need to come together. And we need to understand all the resources that are out there for us in the city. And there's so many amazing people that I've met through the tech Council and that I've met in my time, you know, over the last three, three or four years working in the tech ecosystem, and I'm happy that you're doing the series and 10 tell them some of those stories. And I'm sure I'll get the watch and listen and get to hear about people that I didn't even know existed and I'm looking forward to that.
Good stuff, man. And when these days soon we'll have a beer. I swear.
I need I need it at all times. Never. It's never too early or too late for a beer. Thanks, Derek. You're the best man. All right, brother. Thank you for having me, man.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai