Stephen D. - Attorney / Legal Consultant

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Austin, United States

Experience

Sep 2024 - Present

1 year 3 months

Austin, United States

Attorney / Legal Consultant

Self-Employed

Provide general legal advice for start-ups and small businesses, including contract review and formation of LLCs.
Provide services on a contract basis to a rural Texas law firm, with concentration in real estate, estate planning, probate and trust matters.
Site editor for the cvpoints.com travel blog.

Aug 2023 - Apr 2024

9 months

Legal Editor

Lexitas

Evaluated the output of large language models for accuracy, misattribution, off point/irrelevant citations, un-cited statements, hallucination, completeness, authoritativeness, appropriateness and overall usefulness of the model’s output.
Assisted with the reinforced learning with human feedback (RLHF) process, including creating prompts and rating the LLM output.
Evaluated the authoritativeness of grounding passages.
Handled other projects as assigned by supervisor.

Aug 2021 - Sep 2023

2 years 2 months

Lease Abstractor

SitusAMC

Lease abstracting, on a project basis, for commercial and residential financial services company.

Mar 2009 - Feb 2021

12 years

Austin, United States

Deputy General Counsel

Texas Department of Agriculture

Lead deputy general counsel for Texas state agency with an annual budget of $1 billion+ and ~700 employees, including direction and oversight of the Office of the General Counsel and delegated authority to act on behalf of the General Counsel and TDA executive in their absence.
Provided support to TDA executive and the General Counsel across a wide variety of agricultural, water and other policy matters, including preparation of memoranda, legal and practical advice, attendance at conferences, drafting correspondence and rule comments to federal agencies, and preparation of amicus curiae briefs.
Managed a team of six attorneys and four staff in providing legal support to the agency’s operating and business divisions, ensuring quality and timely legal services across administrative hearings, contracts, grants, intellectual property, leases, legislation, licensing, litigation, procurement, public information, rule-making and trademarks.

May 1982 - Mar 2009

26 years 11 months

Austin, United States

Attorney

Private Practice

Represented a variety of commercial entities and entrepreneurs in contract, corporate, employment, real estate and trademark law; drafted, negotiated and reviewed construction contracts, license agreements, non-disclosure agreements, personal property purchase and lease agreements, professional service agreements, real estate leases and purchase agreements, secured transactions, shareholder agreements and stock purchase agreements; prepared organizational documents for corporations, limited liability companies, limited partnerships and partnerships; acted as corporate counsel for small businesses, handling formation, governance, contract and trademark matters.
Conducted commercial and real estate litigation, complex personal injury defense, creditor representation in United States Bankruptcy Court, and collection and deficiency litigation for financial institutions.

Summary

Attorney retired from government service seeking opportunity to utilize my communication, legal, writing and analytical skills in a position outside the traditional practice of law.