Our Values
Smarter legal solutions don’t just happen. At modCounsel, all our conversations, growth recommendations, and trusted relationships are guided by our four core values.
Create Success Together
Beyond just being transactional, every milestone you'll achieve will be propelled through the power of partnership and sharing success.
Demonstrate
Value
Legal excellence, partnership, and accountability, as your alternative legal service provider your growth is non-negotiable.
Passion With
Purpose
Built around the mission of changing the legal field's status quo and motivated to bring legal value to growing businesses.
Think Beyond With
Courage
When it comes to legal challenges, courage should always come with creativity and a tactfully planned attack.
YOUR mC LEADERSHIP TEAM
Meet your Fortune 50-trained team, ready to help you grow your business with outstanding legal services.
As an experienced General Counsel with two stints at late stage growth companies, Ronak Ray leads all legal matters for maturing businesses. He applies the business judgment he developed early in his career working with Fortune 100 leaders.
He is a veteran of professional services and technology companies with a decade in supporting each of these industries on scaling for pre-IPO success. Ronak started out at Accenture in advisory roles across finance, risk management and legal.
A decade later, he left the structure of a public company for a feisty pseudo-start-up making waves in digital CMS at Sitecore. Nearly four years later and a blockbuster exit at €1 billion, he was tapped by TaskUs, a digital-first outsourcing company, to build a legal function from scratch.
He supported TaskUs’ board as corporate secretary and 18,000 people globally while managing to close a $500 million transaction with Blackstone before joining another scaling technology company at Pantheon as their General Counsel.
Ronak holds a bachelor’s degree in finance and economics from DePaul University and a law degree from DePaul University College of Law. He is certified in intellectual property law and is also a certified privacy professional (CIPP/US).
Zeena Schwarzmeier is a Co-Founder of modCounsel and leads the Contract Management Practice. Her team supports drafting and negotiating contracts for various organizations, from early-stage growth companies to well-established Fortune 50 companies.
Zeena is known for her zealous negotiation skills and passion for efficiency. She has been leading contract management efforts for several years, and clients turn to her to build sustainable business processes with contract playbooks and internal guidelines.
Zeena prides herself on close client relationships, personally onboarding new contract management clients, and maintaining regular interaction with commercial teams.
Her undergraduate degree is from the University of the Philippines, and her J.D. is from Ateneo de Manila University.
Katie Kiernan Marble leads modCounsel’s Global Employment Practice. With over 15 years of experience as an employment attorney, Katie focuses on processes that bake compliance into day-to-day operations and allow internal teams to reduce the time and energy they need to spend on employment compliance issues.
At Nuance Communications, Katie led a global employment compliance program encompassing over 7,000 employees in 25+ countries, scaling employment law practices and operationalizing compliance to simplify processes and mitigate risk for a company that was then acquired by Microsoft.
While at Pantheon, she again led the employment compliance function, but this time for a company that was increasing their employee base and building international operations. Here she built out global employment practices for a growth company while ensuring compliance and respecting local culture.
Katie is known for conducting engaging training sessions for managers and employees on compliance best practices. She understands the importance of a company’s culture and ensures that culture forms the basis of any employment policies, employment handbooks, and codes of conduct, while also ensuring that these documents meet the relevant legal standards and best practices for each jurisdiction.
At the core of Katie’s work is the belief that all good relationships are built on trust, whether it be the relationship between employee and employer or lawyer and client. Katie is committed to building relationships of trust with her clients and helping them build relationships of trust with their employees.
Katie received her undergraduate degree in political science from the University of New Hampshire and her J.D. from the American University Washington College of Law in Washington, D.C.
Stephen McDougall is Of Counsel with modCounsel. He provides clients with substantial expertise in data privacy, data strategy, technology transactions, digital transformation, and the development and deployment of Artificial Intelligence.
Stephen has led and supported a variety of teams and numerous cross-functional initiatives across a range of businesses, most recently leading a data & privacy legal team. His experience spans a wide range of businesses and functions in the U.S. LATAM, APAC and the EU, with a strong focus on regulatory compliance, digital transformation, AI, and product development.
Stephen’s background in both law firms and in-house corporate legal departments included practicing in the areas of commercial litigation and business regulation, litigation and arbitration, and in regulatory matters as well as internal investigations and risk assessment engagements. His experience also includes numerous lines of insurance, working with Broker-Dealer and Registered Investment Advisor entities, business process improvement, compliance program maturation, litigation, e- discovery, records management, marketing, complex transaction negotiation, employee benefit plan design, and supporting many complex transformational initiatives.
Stephen has degrees in both Law and Economics from the University of Melbourne and is licensed in New York.
Brian R. Hedlund is Of Counsel with modCounsel. Brian provides clients with talent and expertise in corporate tax, corporate acquisitions and divestitures.
Brian brings substantial expertise in corporate tax, having led a large corporate tax department team and overseen multi-billion-dollar corporate acquisitions and divestitures. His experience also includes being responsible for all aspects of international tax planning for businesses in over 60 countries in Europe, Latin America and APAC, as well as providing legal guidance for global strategies and expansion for various corporations. He also managed tax planning and compliance for a multi-billion-dollar telecommunications network throughout North America, Europe and Asia.
Brian’s tenure includes many years in senior Finance and Legal roles at large corporations, as well as starting his career in law firms, practicing in the areas of mergers and acquisitions, corporate partnerships, and corporate tax.
His undergraduate degree is from Carleton College, and his J.D. is from University of Chicago Law School.
Arezou Arefi-Afshar is seasoned start-up general counsel and business advisor that has a passion for supporting hypergrowth companies.
As a member of modCounsel’s Fractional General Counsel practice, she supports growth businesses as their resident in-house legal executive with the support of modCounsel’s full in-house legal team, across all practice areas.
Her focus is assisting clients with fundraising, global expansion, achieving aggressive revenue targets, and building effective and scalable processes across legal and other business units. She has assisted companies with global expansion in over ten countries through North America, Latin America, EMEA, and APAC.
Her experience also includes developing and implementing scalable processes to support growth, including go-to-market and risk playbooks, Global HR and compliance policies, best practices, training, and requisite legal agreements.
Arezou is known for her deep expertise in efficiently scaling hypergrowth B2B SaaS companies, guiding the C-Suite and Board of Directors through funding, financing, and M&A, as well as implementing post-M&A integration plans.
Arezou has cultivated her career by employing strategic planning and leveraging exceptional communication skills across various levels. Her unique blend of empathy and persuasive abilities has been instrumental in achieving favorable results and driving positive outcomes throughout her professional journey.
Arezou holds a bachelor’s degree in science from Seattle University and a law degree from Seattle University School of Law.
Wendy is an experienced in-house attorney for both private and publicly held companies of all sizes, from early-stage startups to global fortune 250 companies. She has served as General Counsel and corporate secretary for early-stage startups, and has worked for global fortune 250 companies, where she has negotiated and closed some of the companies’ largest deals. Wendy has also served as general counsel of a large technology company’s foreign division. She has also coached and led talented global and domestic teams to support revenue-generating divisions of businesses to meet key company objectives as a both commercial deal lawyer and General Counsel.
Wendy’s extensive legal experience and business background render her a trusted advisor to executives across business units. She is called upon by C-suite executives to assist in high-level decision-making and developing creative solutions to complex customer issues, planning geographic expansions, and launching new products. In her practice, Wendy anticipates and addresses data privacy, security and other developing regulatory and industry changes affecting her client’s business globally on a real-time basis.
Prior to joining modCounsel, Wendy served as an Assistant General Counsel at Lumen, CenturyLink, and Qwest. She was also a Business Associate at Holland & Hart in Denver, CO and a judicial law clerk for the Colorado Supreme Court. She also worked for the US Court for the District of Oregon, Morrison and Forester, and Davis Wright Tremaine.
Wendy received her undergraduate and MBA degrees from Penn State University and her J.D. from the University of Oregon.
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