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The cornerstone of Josh’s practice is his ability to work as part of a cross-functional team focused on industry best practices to drive sales and generate value. Josh helps businesses raise funds, take products to market, close software and licensing deals, sell their business, buy new business, and work internationally among other commercial and business transactions.. Josh also works with cannabis law, nonprofit law, and restaurant and liquor licensing. He has helped hundreds of business accelerate and protect their business by integrating world class legal thinking with successful business strategies.

Derek Johnson grew up in a small community in the midwest. After multiple family trips to the Pacific Northwest, Derek decided that Washington was the place he eventually wanted to make his home. After attending University of North Dakota on a Presidential Scholarship, Derek applied to and was accepted at Gonzaga University School of Law in Spokane, Washington.. While attending law school, Derek developed an interest in tax law and estate planning. He spent two semesters in the tax law clinic as well as participated in creating wills and estate plans for veterans.. Derek was also involved in the Society for Law in Business for all three of his years in law school. He became president of the club during his last year. During his tenure in the Society of Law and Business, Derek was involved in organizing three different business law CLE's, spotlighting the Dodd-Frank Act, the Jobs Act, and Securities Regulations.

Brett Spooner is the Founder, Chief Executive Officer, and Managing Partner of Gravis Law, PLLC a National Law Firm with headquarters in Richland Washington. On a day to day basis Brett runs Gravis Law and dedicates much of his free time to the growth and expansion of small businesses and the entrepreneurial ecosystem in the Tri-Cities. As an angle investor, tech enthusiast, and serial entrepreneur, he merges his skills and interests to solve access-to-law problems.. Brett earned his law degree from Gonzaga University School of Law in 2013 after four years working in the legal and tech sector. At Gonzaga, he focused his studies on Business Law and Securities Regulation, working in the Business Law Clinic, and organized joint entrepreneurial and startup efforts across the community. Through law school he grew, started his first privately held investment company, and managed a national consulting company that provided software implementation, cybersecurity, and process management procedures to law firms and banks. After Gonzaga he jumped right into practice for himself and Founded Gravis Law, PLLC.. He is currently the Founder and CEO of Manage Squared, Inc. a software as a service company that makes legal case management software, and President of a co-working space called Fuse, where one of Gravis Law, PLLC’s offices is located. Further, because of his strong interest in economic development, he is on the Board of the Tri-Cities Regional Chamber of Commerce, Gesa Credit Union, Wildland Labs, Inc, and State of Motion, where he focuses his volunteer time with organizations that further the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Brett is passionate about spreading his knowledge about business with his community, he provides education openly to the community every change he gets; teaching about business and law at both Launch University, Fuse, Washington State University Tri-Cities, Columbia Basin Community College, where he lectures on topics such as entrepreneurship, business development, board development, millennials in the workforce, and private access to capital.. Brett’s goal is to solve accessibility issues in law, entrepreneurship, and economic development across the nation. He is a serial entrepreneur himself and seeks to achieve a healthy balance between real world business experience and the legal profession. To attain this harmony, he is actively engaged in multiple philanthropic works, investment funds, commercial real estate development, and private business endeavors ranging from a solar-powered distillery to software as a service company.. When Brett is not immersed in the business community of the Tri-Cities, he spends time with his wife and daughters. He also enjoys mountain biking, hunting, golf, and writing science fiction. He believes most in the national activation of local community impact, and capitalism for cause.

Neal Taylor has experienced more than 40 years of business development across many industries including: utility smart grid, multi-family and commercial property management automation, electronic bill presentment and payment, health medicine.  His normal role has been as Sr. VP Business Development/Revenue/Sales & Marketing (including mergers and acquisitions and securities).  Neal has helped more  than 30 small to medium sized companies generate more than $2B of new sales or shareholder value on his watch as he moved from one company in turn-around or rapid growth stage to another.. He has now settled down in his original home town where he attended grade school through high school and married his high school sweet-heart that is now his GMa to his GPA.. "Gravis Law, PLLC, is a growth company with substantial growth goals to form a nationwide practice in secondary markets making legal solutions more accessible--making Law Uncomplicated," said Taylor.  "It is like being a piece of bread that is buttered on both sides," continued Taylor, "to be the Managing Attorney for the business law (Commercial Transactions) side of this rapidly growing practice.  I get to help Gravis Law achieve extraordinary growth results by helping our business Clients achieve and protect extraordinary growth.". We pactice Team Law at the Commercial Transactions group, and serve more than 13 practice areas from Intellectual Property through to Licensing for alcohol and cannabis, employment law, securities, etc.

“I think of myself as a problem solver. With almost 30 years of experience advising people in tax, business and estate matters, I’d like to think I’ve seen almost everything. I draw on that experience in counseling my clients and helping them develop creative solutions to even the most difficult problems . . .”. “. . . Finding a satisfactory solution is certainly rewarding, but for me, what’s most rewarding is knowing that I have helped to add a measure of peace and order to someone’s life.”

The Tax Law Firm of Charles A. Ray, Jr. represents individuals and businesses all over the United States, not just in Washington, D. C. The firm thrives not only because of satisfied clients and its reputation for success, but also because of referrals from other attorneys who know and trust the quality of Charles Ray’s work. We deliver personal attention to our clients by listening, remaining accessible, and promptly responding to their needs. We are selective about the cases we accept to ensure the consistent delivery of exceptional service and personal commitment to each case.

Robert Powers is a licensed attorney in the State of Virginia and the District of Columbia. He primarily provides outside general counsel services to a wide variety of businesses, from small, midsize, to emerging for-profit and non-profit organizations located across the United States. Mr. Powers serves them with intellectual property counseling, such as copyright and trademark, also corporate compliance, data protection, drafting, updating, and negotiating documents, customer complaints, employment concerns and regulations, litigation, and more.. Mr. Powers has worked, negotiated with, and litigated against several American Law five-hundred international firms. He has served as lead counsel in over one-hundred litigations, including collective actions with formal appearances before various courts all over the country. Included but not limited to, Virginia Circuit Courts, the U.S. District Courts for the Eastern and the Western District of Virginia, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the U.S Court of Appeals for Federal and Fourth Circuit, DC Superior Court, as well as multiple Courts in New York. Additionally, Mr. Powers often serves as lead counsel in various litigations before the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Not to mention, he also serves as local counsel for other firms before the U.S. District Court for the Eastern of Virginia, particularly the Alexandria Division. Considering this Court is Mr. Powers' primary venue and division, he has gained expertise in navigating the pitfalls of the “Rocket Docket” and its local civil rules.. Throughout his education, professional practice, and experience as a business owner himself, Mr. Powers has acquired the knowledge and skills needed to provide exceptional legal services to his clients. As he understands the complex implications of a rapidly changing, technology-reliant economy, he proactively pushes his practice to adapt to such changes to best benefit his clients.. When Robert is not practicing law, you might find him spending quality time with his family and friends, traveling, and watching sports, especially football, one of his favorites!

Ryan A. Brown was born in Kansas City and raised in California. His first job in the computer industry began at the age of eleven, building and repairing personal computers for a local store in Santa Barbara, California. In 1993 he began a computer and Internet consulting firm and started the first Internet Service Provider (ISP) in Santa Barbara.. Ryan went on to attend Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, where he received a BS in Computer Science with departmental and school honors and a BA in Spanish in 2000. Ryan is a member of Tau Beta Pi, Upsilon Pi Epsilon and the ACM, and won awards for undergraduate research and teaching. Continuing at Johns Hopkins, he received a Masters of Science and Engineering in Computer Science from Johns Hopkins in May of 2002.. After completing his Computer Science studies, Ryan went on to earn a Juris Doctorate Magna Cum Laude in December of 2006 from George Mason University School of Law in Arlington, Virginia, with concentrations in business, tax and estate planning law.. Since starting Arlington Law Group in 2007, Ryan has worked with a wide array of businesses and individual clients on estate planning, business law and tax planning. Ryan also works with several technology start-up and early stage companies on company governance, private placements of stock and debt, and computer and Internet law.. Ryan has served and continues to serve on the boards of several for-profit and non-profit organizations. Ryan previously served on the board of the Arlington County Bar Association and has volunteered for several pro-bono projects in Northern Virginia including Wills for Heroes which provides free wills and estate planning documents to first responders (police, sheriff, fire & paramedics). Ryan regularly gives seminars on estate planning, tax and business law, teaches an annual Continuing Legal Education class at George Mason University School of Law and occasionally guest lectures at the law school.. Bar Admissions:. Bar Associations:

Mr. Jeff Smith is a highly experienced securities, tax, business, M&A, regulatory compliance, digital assets, capital markets, and FinTech attorney with over 26 years of experience strengthening the legal and compliance functions of financial services companies, investment advisers, broker-dealers, digital asset companies, family offices, technology companies, and investment vehicles. He has represented companies at all stages of maturity with their legal and compliance needs related to capital and debt raising efforts via private and public offerings. He has also served as Chief Legal Officer and Chief Compliance Officer for many companies while also working in the Director of Enforcement’s office at the Securities and Exchange Commission and serving as Investigative Counsel for President Obama at the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission. Mr. Smith also serves on public company boards and was highly instrumental in facilitating the merger between Digital World Acquisition Corp and Trump Media & Technology Group, resulting in Trump Media becoming a publicly traded, well-resourced company. Mr. Smith also advises presidents, heads of parliament and ministers throughout Africa as part of his work in international economic development and is an expert in tax structuring and asset preservation planning. He has also been a pioneer in the development of tradable fractional and partitioned interests in rarities and real world asset tokenization as a co-founder of RarityX.. CREDENTIALS

When I am not in the office, I pursue lots of interests.  I love to play golf and tennis.  I enjoy all forms of live theater, including Broadway musicals, dramas, light opera, grand opera.  I also enjoy the other arts, especially classical music and viewing the works of great painters, sculptors and architects.  I spend time every summer hiking, bicycling, canoeing and kayaking, particularly in Colorado.  I also love to travel.  Finally, as I get older, I find that I thoroughly enjoy reading classical literature and well-written histories, escpecially about American history.. I am married to the former Anne Biden Winter and have an 18 year old son who will begin college in the fall.

My life these days is largely centered around my work.  However, I have always been very active physically and remain in excellent physical condition notwithstanding my ever-expanding girth.  I ran and coached competitively for about 25 years and then switched over to bicycling, which I have done all my life. Every year I promise to drop some pounds so that I can get back to doing time trials.  In the meantime, I enjoy riding 4-6 days per week during the summer, with one long ride of 40-70 miles and the other rides 15-20 miles.  I also lift weights, and am much stronger now than I was when I had skinny runner arms in my twenties and thirties.. Other than work and exercise, I follow a lot of sports, mostly at the professional level, including MMA (big fan of Royce Graycie back in the day and Fedor Emelianenko), Nascar (Jeff Gordon although I think his winning may be in the past), MLB (excited about the Nats), NFL (Redskins, since I live here), NHL (Caps, for the same reason, plus they're good), Le Tour de France, and track and field.. Although I long ago gave up my intellectual pretensions, I spent  my younger adult years studying and teaching philosophy. In addition to Socrates and Plato, whom virtually all philosophy students in this country love, my favorite philosophers at the beginning of my studies were late nineteenth century Germans better known for their literary brilliance than their metaphysical prowess.  Thus in 1975, I published my first paper on Schopenhauer and wrote a master's thesis comparing Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Neitzsche with Sartor Resartus by Thomas Carlyle, who was not a German philosopher but wished that he were.. As I progressed in my academic studies, I moved towards a style of philosophy formerly known as the British analytical school (I don't know if the term still is used), although one of the central figures in this school was Ludwig Wittgenstein, who was every bit as strange as Neitzsche and Schopenhauer.. Before leaving academia, apparently for good, I completed my Ph.D. from the University of New Mexico with a dissertation that concerned "self-defeating" and "self-fulfilling" predictions in the social sciences.  This was more or less an interdisciplinary study in which I discussed certain theories of explaining social behavior then prevalent in sociology, psychology, economics, and sociobiology, none of which fields I have kept up with, since lawyers as a whole are rather anti-intellectual in nature.