Jason Nazar’s Blog

As a recent law school graduate (never practiced law), and a current CEO of a technology company, I have a deep appreciation for both the law and entrepreneurship (although the former clearly won out). I also know first hand that law school and lawyer-ing do not go hand in hand with risk taking, and can have the affect of sedating one’s entrepreneurial spirit.

That’s why I wanted to highlight a few exceptional CEO’s in the tech space, who just happened to get their start in the law.

Peter Thiel is best known as the CEO and co-founder of PayPal. Now he’s a badass VC. But once upon a time he too was a lowly 1L… at Stanford.

Michael Arrington is the founder of TechCrunch (and technically not CEO anymore). But back in the day he graduated from Stanford Law School and practiced as a corporate and securities attorney. Some of my favorite posts of his are stories like, “It’s Time to Rethink Copyright Law”.

Erick Hachenburg is Metacafe’s CEO, which ranks on the first page of Google for the term “sex”… doesn’t get much cooler than that. But before he was ballin like a villan with user-generated videos, Erick was hustling away at Harvard Law… “safety school”.

Richard Rosenblatt is the current CEO of Demand Media, and best known for his role as Chairman of a place for friends called MySpace. Little did he know, while goofing off in law school classes at USC, that he would provide the most popular in-class distraction for a generation of law school students.

Eric Alterman is the founder of Kickaps.com and a graudate of the Washington College of Law. In looking at his LinkedIN profile, I think Erick has founded more companies that classes he took in graduate school.

I’m fortunate to consider Tim Stanley a friend. He’s one of the sharpest CEO’s I know, and was the founder of FindLaw.com, one of the most widely used resources to help the Regular Joe find out about the law. Tim’s not done kickin ass and taking names, he’s heading up another legal/tech venture in Justia.

Al Gore is Chairman of Curret TV, once upon a time he was living la vida loca at Vanderbilt Law School. The consummate underachiever, he went on to serve as senator, Vice President, accumulate the majority of the popular vote for the President of the United States, become a movie star, win a noble peace prize, and save the planet from the likes of folks who believe global warming is a either a left wing conspiracy or the rightful interpretation of the final chapter of the bible.

Thanks to CrunchBase for helping me with most the research and pictures.

This entry was posted Saturday, July 12th, 2008 at 9:00 pm and is filed under Business. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.