Foundations for counsel
A lawyer cannot write policy for a field they do not understand.
Many young lawyers want a technology practice. They can recite the Nigeria Data Protection Act and the shape of a contract. They freeze when a product manager says the token lives in Redis, the webhook failed, or user acceptance testing was deemed accepted.
Tech & Counsel teaches the technical layer first — stacks, the development lifecycle, Git, APIs, data flows, cookies, and testing — so you can draft privacy and cookie policies that match the product, negotiate technology contracts with your eyes open, and follow a software dispute without borrowing someone else’s vocabulary.
Tech & Counsel provides education only. Nothing on this site is legal advice, and nothing here creates a solicitor–client relationship.
How the path works
Four movements, then the clause.
01
Name the system
Frontend, backend, database, and where the software actually lives. If you cannot draw the stack, you cannot describe it in a policy.
02
Follow how it is built
Waterfall and Agile, Git history, pull requests, and the moment a third-party API becomes your client’s problem.
03
Map the data
Sit with the product manager. Match every field on a screen to a place it is stored, a person who can read it, and a reason it exists.
04
Draft with the product in view
Privacy notices, cookie choices, SLAs, acceptance criteria, and the questions you can defend in a product meeting or a hearing.
The sentence that freezes the room
Doctrine does not translate a product meeting.
“We store tokens in Redis.”
“The webhook failed.”
“UAT was deemed accepted.”
What goes wrong
Ambition without a picture of the system.
A copied privacy policy names data the product does not collect and stays silent about the SDK that does. An SLA promises a percentage nobody has tied to hours. A third-party payments API fails, and the contract still speaks as if the client built the rails. User acceptance testing is a sentence — “successful completion” — and a year later the argument is whether the system was finished or stalled.
The path is modular and written for lawyers. You leave able to ask better questions in a product meeting, to draft a privacy or cookie notice that could survive a conversation with the person who built the feature, and to read a technology dispute without treating the engineering record as decoration.
This is not a law firm, a pupillage, or a live advice desk. Phase 1 does not issue a qualification.
Module 1
Software Development Demystified
The tech-literacy layer. Stacks, the development lifecycle, Git, APIs, and user acceptance testing — translated for lawyers who have to draft for a product they cannot yet describe.
Module 2
Applied Data Privacy and Policy Drafting
How a line of product behaviour becomes a sentence in a notice. Data maps, functional privacy policies, cookies and SDKs, impact assessments, and retention that matches the code.
Module 3
Tech Contracts and Intellectual Property
SaaS, service levels, open-source licences, copyright in code, and the assignment you needed before the first commit.
Module 4
Product Advisory and Cross-Functional Work
How to sit with a product manager and a CTO before the feature ships: privacy by design, Nigerian regulators, and the first day of a breach.
Begin with the stack.
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