The technical foundation under high-stakes AI decisions.
Some AI decisions carry legal, regulatory, or financial consequences that all turn on one thing: getting the technology right. Starrett Law and Advisory establishes — and defends — what an AI system actually is, where its value is created, and how it behaves. That technical foundation is what high-stakes governance, tax, and dispute matters rest on. We advise; and where a matter calls for it, we represent.
Three pillars, one discipline.
Governance, tax, and disputes each rest on the same thing: getting the engineering facts right, and building a record that survives scrutiny.
AI Governance & Risk
Building, deploying, and accounting for AI responsibly — governance frameworks, privacy program design, AI-risk and third-party/AI-vendor assessments, and regulatory defense — grounded in how the systems actually work, not in checklists.
Cybersecurity risk assessment · AI governance and compliance · Data privacy and protection · Third-party and AI-vendor risk
AI & Technology Tax Credits
R&D tax credit substantiation and audit defense — federal and California. We build the technical record the credit rests on: what the AI actually is, where the qualifying work was performed, down to the compute, training pipelines, and model artifacts. The fit runs deepest where the engineering is our own: AI, cybersecurity, and fintech. Also software and compute capitalization, transfer pricing, and M&A structuring.
R&D credits reach companies directly and through the professionals who advise them — we're the technical and legal specialist behind the claim, not a competitor for the client relationship.
Venture Capital, Private Equity & Accelerators
Credit substantiation as a portfolio-wide benefit: consistent, defensible quality across companies, and a single point of contact if any claim is challenged.
Startups
Heavy R&D, lean finance teams, often no tax function. For qualifying small businesses, the credit offsets up to $500,000 a year of employer payroll tax — money back even pre-revenue and pre-profit. We substantiate it; your CPA claims it.
Fractional CFOs
You see qualifying R&D across every company you touch. We turn it into a defensible study — and, for early-stage clients, the payroll-tax offset that returns cash before profitability.
CPA & Tax Firms
A technical second opinion, and subcontracted specialist, for the AI and software claims whose substantiation has to hold up. You keep the client and file the return; we build the record and can stand as attorney of record if it is ever examined.
Where a position is sensitive, engagements can be structured under attorney privilege — protection a volume credit study can't offer.
Built for California's precedential First Solar substantiation standard and the SB 711 ASC election. Grounded in a Master of Laws in Taxation from a graduate tax program long ranked among the nation's best by the firms that recruit from it.
AI Disputes & Investigations
When AI systems, data, or outputs come under scrutiny — in litigation, regulatory inquiry, or internal investigation — we reconstruct what the technology did and produce a defensible technical record.
Decades of forensic-investigation experience, now applied to AI.
Paul Starrett
Starrett Law and Advisory pairs deep legal and tax fluency with hands-on technical depth in AI and data systems — the rare pairing these matters require.
Why Advisory
The practice began in 2001 as a law firm and grew into a full-service advisory and consulting practice as technology risk moved to the center of our clients' hardest problems. The shift was deliberate: on AI questions, conventional legal work too often stops at citing frameworks, while the answers that hold up turn on getting the engineering facts right. We lead with that technical work — advisory by default — and provide legal representation where a matter calls for it.
Engineering Foundation
That fluency isn't secondhand — it starts with five years as a security software engineer at RSA Security, writing production encryption and authentication software before the forensic, governance, and tax work that followed. Reading the build is a habit that predates the law.
Experience
Founder Paul Starrett has served as General Counsel and Chief Risk Officer of a publicly held AI and data-management company, leading global legal, technology, and risk operations. He has led investigations and e-discovery on 45+ multimillion-dollar matters for AmLaw 50 firms and Fortune 100 clients.
Teaching
Teaches AI governance and cybersecurity law at Santa Clara University School of Law, and Law and Machine Learning in the M.S. in Data Science program at the University of the Pacific. A frequent subject-matter expert and CLE/CPE faculty instructor.
Leadership
Founding chair (2013–2020) of the ABA's Big Data Committee, and a contributor to the IAPP's AI Governance Certification as a practice-exam question writer and peer reviewer. Active in the IAPP, ACFE, and ISACA.
A rare stack of disciplines under one roof.
Most advisors bring either the law or the technology. Our advantage is the seam between them: we speak the engineering and the legal, regulatory, and tax rules with equal fluency — so the technical facts a high-stakes position depends on are established correctly and hold up under scrutiny.
Law
Attorney practice across AI governance, privacy, and regulatory matters.
Tax
Tax-law depth, paired with the engineering to prove what the numbers rest on.
Artificial Intelligence
Working fluency in how models are built, trained, and deployed.
Data Science
The training to interrogate the data and the methodology, not just the summary.
Software Engineering
Encryption, PKI, and authentication systems then; generative-AI coding tools now.
Forensic Investigation
Investigation and evidence experience that makes technical claims provable when challenged.
PrivacyLabs Compliance Technology Podcast
Conversations at the intersection of privacy, AI governance, tax, and compliance — for practitioners who have to make the technology and the law agree.
Listen on Buzzsprout →Let's discuss the matter.
Whether you need an advisory memo or representation through a regulatory inquiry or dispute, the first conversation is direct and confidential.