Jesse Strauss

Jesse Strauss is a senior New York attorney with two decades of practice spanning federal litigation, complex transactions, and two tours as General Counsel of venture-backed companies. He founded Strauss Law PLLC in 2023 to bring that combination of experience — courtroom, boardroom, and operator — to a new generation of businesses, founders, and institutions.

His career began in the federal courts. After graduating cum laude from Brooklyn Law School, he clerked for the Honorable Dora L. Irizarry, a U.S. District Judge and former Chief Judge for the Eastern District of New York. Federal clerkships are the foundation on which careful litigators are built; Jesse's first year of practice was inside the room where motions are decided, not outside it.

He then practiced as a litigation associate at two New York firms: Blank Rome LLP, where his work spanned commercial real estate litigation and transactions, environmental litigation, and government investigations; and Labaton Sucharow LLP, the securities-fraud plaintiffs' firm, where he represented institutional investors including the NYCERS pension fund in complex federal securities cases.

In the early 2010s he opened a solo plaintiff and appellate practice under the Strauss Law name, taking on a string of high-stakes commercial and constitutional matters. He co-authored an amicus brief to the New York Court of Appeals on a high-stakes affordable-housing matter affecting thousands of residents. He served as lead counsel in an Article 78 proceeding involving access to records held by a New York City agency, with broad implications for government transparency. And he led a coordinated action on behalf of sixty-five recent law-school graduates in five states suing their schools for consumer-protection violations and fraud in employment reporting — one of the earliest cases of its kind. During this period he was twice selected as a Metro New York Super Lawyer Rising Star (2012 and 2013).

In 2016 he moved in-house. As VP & General Counsel of Common Living, Inc., a Series D proptech company, he led the legal function through seven years of hypergrowth — from twenty-five employees in two states to three hundred and fifty employees in ten. He built and ran a legal team of two lawyers and two compliance professionals, managed all litigation including a high-stakes regulatory action resolved by consent decree, closed a $40M Series C, a $50M Series D, a $25M bridge round, and $15M of venture debt, and structured joint ventures and partnerships financing more than $100M in multi-family real estate. He sat on the Executive and Strategic Committees and reported to the CEO. The company was acquired in late 2022.

He then served as General Counsel of Everyrealm Inc., one of the best-known venture-backed companies at the frontier of virtual worlds and immersive media. He managed four concurrent litigations, led the legal due diligence and negotiation of joint ventures and virtual-experience agreements, negotiated marketing and IP-licensing deals with influencers, agencies, and rights-holders, and stood up a company-wide compliance program spanning GDPR and CCPA privacy, payments, securities law (including security tokens), and COPPA.

In December 2023 Jesse re-founded Strauss Law PLLC and launched its productized fractional general counsel offering, YFGC.AI. The firm represents businesses and individuals in commercial litigation, arbitration, financings, and fractional general counsel services; it has also built one of the first AI-native general counsel platforms in the United States. He is the author of Fractionally Yours on Substack, a regular publication on legal AI, business law, and the forces reshaping the profession. In 2024 Crain's New York Business named him a Notable General Counsel.

Outside the firm, Jesse has been a Founding Member of TechGC since 2017, an invitation-only peer community where the general counsel of public and private tech companies share legal best practices. He has served as Membership Chair and Political Co-Chair of the New York Democratic Lawyers Council, and as the New York Chapter Coordinator for Volunteer Young Lawyers for Obama, where he helped recruit and train more than five hundred volunteer attorneys for voter-protection work nationwide. He was a Fellow in the Office of the Mayor of New York City and a voting member of Brooklyn's Community Board 2 from 2008 to 2013, nominated by his City Council member and appointed by the Borough President. In 2015 he founded Indepayment.com, an internet-native debt-collection platform — an early indication of the operator's instinct that later defined his in-house career.

He holds a J.D., cum laude, from Brooklyn Law School and a B.A. from The George Washington University. He is a U.S. and German citizen, qualified to work in the United States and the European Union — useful when matters cross the Atlantic, which they increasingly do.

When he is not at the desk he is with his kids, on a ski slope, in a theater, or somewhere in New York City. He travels widely.