I'm a lawyer . . . but then, you may have gathered as much from my preoccupation with sharks :-)

I am going to refrain from including any personal information at this time. Audrey's page contains that information and I think that's a perfectly comprehensive recital of how the Internet brought us together.

Since I am a lawyer with a website, you might infer that I am a technology lawyer. You would not be completely off the mark in drawing that conclusion, but not completely correct, either. I began in the legal profession as a fairly ordinary real estate lawyer at a Wall Street firm. For a variety of reasons, it was thought interesting to see if I could self-educate as a construction lawyer. The experiment was successful. It also resulted in my conversion to an engineering lawyer and my exit from the legal profession to become Chief Operating Officer of a startup technology company based in Reston, Virginia.

It was an interesting foray into the world of Beltway Weirdness. My sojourn into the world where violence was approached with mathematical elegance was, mercifully, cut short by a governance dispute with the investors in the company. Silly me, I thought, I could always return to New York and the practice of law.

As things turned out, I ended up in a small neighborhood law firm. It took two years of personal injury trial practice before I had recultivated enough connections to hook up with a firm in the Big Apple . . . a firm that, although six times larger than my neighborhood law firm, was still regarded as "small" by New York city standards. I still was not following the exact practice area I wished for, but at least as a real estate litigator, I was closer to returning to real estate law.

Meanwhile, I kept hearing about this newfangled concept called the Internet. I could not for the life of me see how to make money off of it as a lawyer, so I really didn’t pay much attention to it. In 1994, I broke down and became an ordinary User of the 'net, reading Josh Quittner's articles in Newsday and following his advice with respect to online communities that were worth belong to.

Hence in early 1994 -- on the heels of the infamous Kanter & Siegel spamfest -- I surfed into the Well and promptly became involved in the mother of all flamewars. Fortunately, a kindly member of the Well community -- who memory tells me was Dr. Jonathan Postel (whom at the time I didn't know from Adam) -- convinced me that the Internet really was worthwhile and not to get too discouraged by the flamers.

The first result from that encounter was that I became a confirmed Internet Surfer, leading to my meeting Audrey and, ultimately, to Audrey's and my being required by the Author of the Universe to play host to Ciaran, a daunting task to say the least.

As time went on, I became more and more intrigued by the way in which Internet Domain Names are assigned. I learned -- too late to participate in its work -- of the formation of the International Ad Hoc Committee, but I joined the mailing list anyway. Subsequently, I joined the Internet Policy Advisory Body (PAB), wherein my initial experiences were in some ways similar to those of many others (I became embroiled in an intense flamewar with Perry Metzger) and in others very dissimilar from those of others (Dave Crocker and I developed a good working relationship; go figure :-) ).

I was privileged to serve as the spokesman for the PAB at a July, 1997 conference on the DNS sponsored by the Informational Technology Association of America, Center for Democracy and Technology, and Interactive Services Association. That engagement led to my participation in the kickoff conference of CORE, the Internet Council of Registrars in New York in September, 1997, and was named to CORE's RFP Committee, which published an Request for Proposals for the development and operation of a shared domain name registration system. Once a vendor was selected, CORE engaged me as their attorney to finalize the contract between CORE and the vendor. CORE also honored me with an interim engagement as their attorney for several months.

The opportunity afforded to me by CORE was, without a doubt, a significant factor in my selection by the A.N. Marquis editorial board to be the subject of an entry in the tenth edition of Who's Who in American Law. Being entrusted with what was, without a doubt, the most important transaction in the history of the Internet enabled me to expand the skills I had developed during my tenure just outside the Beltway.

It has also enabled me to become one of the premier construction/technology attorneys in the United States. I am now a senior associate at the Rockefeller Center firm of Robinson, Silverman, Pearce, Aronsohn & Berman, LLP, where I practice in both real estate construction and technology transactions. This combination of skills defines my niche in the market, since clients now have a single-source of legal services savvy in both real estate construction and technology. Given the importance of technology as a motivating factor in the New York City market for construction services, Robinson, Silverman has a significant edge in terms of the efficiency with which high-tech construction legal services can be delivered. Not every construction project will need the fusion of technology and legal services that my experience makes possible, but those which do will recognize a qualitative benefit by employing my firm.

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