AI-Native · Securities · Crypto · Capital Markets
I build legal infrastructure that unblocks business and unlocks revenue.
You hit product–market fit and need legal that runs at your speed. Or you're building in crypto, AI, and securities, where the rules lag the work, and you need someone who moves through the ambiguity instead of hiding behind it.
Problems that look unsolvable get broken down to first principles until a lawful path appears. A shield that keeps you compliant. A sword that drives your raise, your deal, your launch. There's always a way.
The Model
Legal is either a brake or an engine on the business. Built right, it's the engine.
The approach is a legal architect's: break the problem down to its atomic units, design the structure that solves it, then build it. What you get is infrastructure the business runs on.
The Shield
The protection that lets you move fast without getting hurt: clean governance, regulators handled before they call, risk priced honestly so the board can decide with open eyes.
The Sword
The push that gets it done: the raise closed, the product launched, the deal signed. Legal that finds the path to yes and clears what stands in the way of the next milestone.
AI-Native
Legal, run like an engineered system.
Three disciplines most lawyers don't hold at once come together here: law, technology, and the experience of building companies. A co-founded fintech, a product credential, and contract and compliance systems rebuilt at scale.
AI does what an operator needs: it compresses the work, cuts the cost, and moves faster than a traditional legal function. At one platform that meant roughly 90% off peak legal and compliance spend while the company kept growing. For you, that's senior judgment without the big-firm drag.
Focus
Where the work is hardest, and where I'm most useful.
Securities & Capital Markets
Raises, exemptions, and the entities that carry them. Reg D, A+, CF, and S, plus the broker-dealer, funding-portal, adviser, and hedge-fund structures around them.
Crypto, DeFi & Prediction Markets
Token and protocol structuring, AMMs, and prediction markets, plus the regulatory questions that come with shipping a product before the rules settle.
Artificial Intelligence
Building AI products while the law is still forming. How to move now without betting the company on a rule that hasn't been written.
Startups & EC/VC
Founder-stage strategy, venture financings, and fund formation. The legal work that clears the path to the next round instead of slowing it.
General Counsel & Fractional GC
The senior legal seat, full-time or fractional. Governance, board support, and the judgment calls a first legal hire isn't ready to make.
Corporate & Transactional
M&A, joint ventures, financings, and the commercial agreements that run a company, from NDAs to complex trading contracts.
The Record
56
subsidiaries governed
On-shore and off-shore entities under one corporate structure, including regulated ones.
20+
regulated entities
Funding portal, broker-dealer, registered adviser, and foreign-regulated entities across jurisdictions.
~90%
legal & compliance spend cut
Reduced from its peak while scaling a global team of 20-plus specialists.
Both
sides of the table
BigLaw securities litigation, then in-house as General Counsel and C-suite.
Profile
BigLaw securities litigation, a fintech I co-founded, then the senior legal seat at high-growth platforms in crypto and capital markets. I teach securities law at Georgetown on the side.
Read the full profileQuestions
- When should a startup hire its first legal executive?
- Usually right after product–market fit, when legal stops being the occasional contract and starts shaping the business: fundraising, hiring, regulatory exposure, and deals. Before that, outside counsel as needed is enough. A fractional general counsel bridges the gap, giving you senior judgment without a full-time hire.
- What does a fractional general counsel do?
- A fractional GC is a senior legal executive who works with a company part-time while carrying the responsibilities of a full-time GC: governance, contracts, fundraising, regulatory strategy, and risk. It fits companies that need real legal leadership before they can justify a full-time hire.
- Who handles legal for crypto, DeFi, and prediction-market companies?
- These companies need someone who understands both the technology and the unsettled regulation around it. Mario C. Lattuga works at the intersection of TradFi and DeFi, covering token and protocol structuring, prediction markets, and securities exemptions, and has run legal and compliance for regulated platforms at scale.
- How do you move forward when the regulations are unclear?
- By breaking the problem down to first principles: what the law requires, what it doesn't address, and where the lawful path runs. The job is to price the risk honestly and help the business take it, rather than wait for clarity that may take years.
- What makes an AI-native legal executive different?
- A combination of law, technology, and company-building. An AI-native executive uses modern tooling to compress legal work, cut cost, and move faster than a traditional legal function, treating legal as a system to engineer rather than a queue of memos.
Connect
If the problem is complex and the clock is running, let's talk.
I take on a small number of companies at a time. The way in is LinkedIn.