About Brandgeek

I help craft, prioritize and implement brand protection strategies. I’m the teammate on whom you rely to not only identify–but anticipate–the IP legal issues that impact your business. I am actively involved in the communities I serve and support my clients on both a professional and a consumer level. This has led me to identify issues others miss and to find creative, often collaborative, solutions to complex legal challenges. In my 18^th year of trademark practice, with 10 years’ experience as a socialpreneur, I represent social enterprises, bands and promoters worldwide.

As a socialpreneur myself, I am passionate about helping other social enterprises protect their brands, thereby multiplying our positive impact for the greater good.

I tailor my legal service offerings to meet each client’s unique needs, counseling individuals, NGO and for profit organizations of all sizes. I work on monthly retainer for some clients and scope and price work on a project basis for others.

Did you know TEAM is an acronym for Together Everyone Achieves More? Well after 20 years of practicing solo, the team is growing! In addition to me (Lara the Lawyer who Loves Law), you may hear from one or more of these wonderful humans:

Since I began rock climbing in 1999 I admired Yvon Chouinard. I learned about his business philosophy by reading his autobiography, Let My People Go Surfing in December, 2005. Through it, I discovered the social enterprise community and my life gradually changed. For the better.

First, in January 2006, the Law Office of Lara Pearson (LOLP) joined 1% for the Planet and I began donating pro bono legal services to 1%. I joined the Board of Directors of 1% in June 2006, and served as its Secretary through December 2009. Working on 1% (and surfing!) with Yvon forever will remain one of the highlights of my career.

I soon realized that my law firm could operate much more consciously. I researched and emulated some of the operational practices of highly successful companies like Patagonia and Clif Bar, which exist to create positive impact on their stakeholders and communities while minimizing their environmental footprint.

Recognizing that environmental groups need all the support they can get, I took on pro bono work for several more non-profits. And then came my epiphany. I realized numerous benefits come from working with other social enterprises. For one, the people are awesome! I strive to WOW my clients by exceeding their expectations for what an attorney-client relationship can be. That’s easy to do when working for people I admire and consider friends. I also discovered that being in tune with the I serve has enabled me to see things others miss, which uniquely helps me protect my client’s brands and avoid potentially costly mistakes. Most importantly, we are stronger together than we are on our own — there’s a multiplier effect when good businesses do business together; our collective impact is so much greater than what we can achieve individually.

In February 2009, I became a Partner and the Chief Sustainability Officer at Rimon, a Certified B Corporation and one of the first businesses to become a California benefit corporation. As law firm’s Chief Sustainability Officer I helped measure, report and counterbalance 100% of the carbon emissions from all of the attorney and staff’s office energy use, paper consumption, and transportation (business travel & commuting through the purchase of Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs). I also initiated measurement of the law firm’s collective civic engagement through its staff and professionals’ pro bono legal work and volunteer activities.

I left Rimon in July, 2012 to join Exemplar Law. Exemplar was the first corporate law firm in the nation to completely abandon hourly billing (hooray!) in favor of fixed price billing, a feature that is central to my legal practice today. Exemplar Law is sister companies with Exemplar Business, a business consulting firm and Exemplar Capital, an investment bank. In addition to practicing trademark law while at Exemplar, I served as the Sustainability Steward for all three sister companies until my departure from the firm in March, 2015.

Lawyers will tell you that brands embody goodwill. Goodwill can be the likelihood of repeat and new purchases or goodwill can be the good feeling consumers get from their interactions with a certain brand. Those feelings are what I motivates me to do the work I do. The feelings of community, purpose and joy I get from the brands I represent, whether protecting their intangible assets or engaging with their product or services, to me, that is what it is all about.