Derrick Maultsby loves a challenging game of chess.
Too big to play football in his youth, Maultsby took up the competitive playing of the strategic board game and quickly grew fond of the high-level of forward-thinking that the game demands ― a skillset he caries with him and employs regularly now as one of several new attorneys to recently join the Pittsburgh office of Cincinnati, Ohio-based Frost Brown Todd LLC.
As an associate, Maultsby's tactics will remain similar to what they were at his prior employer when he worked at Jackson Kelly PLLC: advising tech startup companies on matters relating to corporate governance, investment documents and due diligence processes, among others.
But unlike before, Maultsby said FBT will offer him more capacity to accomplish these services for clients because of his new ability to work with the expertise of other tech-focused attorneys at the firm.
"I now have greater bandwidth and so whereas I've always treated every client like a Fortune 500 client, as I grew and as our book grew and things like that, it became harder bandwidth-wise where you do start to work longer hours, you've got some days you're working well into the night," Maultsby said. "Now with the bandwidth, I have a much larger team of startup attorneys and small business attorneys and tech attorneys across the country that are doing the work that I've been doing, have a similar approach to what I have, and are able to kind of bolster the team that we have in place servicing the Pittsburgh community and the tri-state community really."
Maultsby's approach, as it relates to legal services for startups, isn't one he's claiming to be new, but it is one that he thinks should be more commonplace in the legal industry. That includes flat-rating some services instead of charging for them by the hour or even being more flexible on payment arrangements and not badgering startups for a completed invoice. Being mindful that startups aren't often working with a lot of capital is important, too, Maultsby said, and having that understanding and finding solutions around it is crucial.
"Always putting the founder first was something that was really big for us, and part of that was just looking for ways to add value to the ecosystem as a whole, whether that be workshops, whether it be office hours, whether that be presentations and things like that," Maultsby said. "That's kind of the feedback you get from a startup. This is their first venture or maybe one of many ventures for them, and they've bootstrapped or they've done this before, and they've maybe cut cost here and cut costs there, and maybe they got lucky and didn't have something bad happen from cutting this, and just at the end of the day, you have to build that relationship, build that trust. I think by putting the founder first, what we found is we're able to create very deep relationships with our clients, which then they truly do trust and believe us and look to us as a part of their team rather than just the line item out of the budget."
Maultsby said all of his clients continued to retain him following his move to FBT, and he's looking forward to adding more in the weeks to come.
He's one of four attorneys from Jackson Kelly to move to FBT, which also picked up Jason Ott and Leah LaFramboise, both joining as members, and Curtis Wadsworth, who joins as counsel.
“They’re two great guys, they really are," Jordan Blask, member-in-charge of Frost Brown Todd’s Pittsburgh office, said of Maultsby and Ott. “They’re culturally aligned, they’re part of exactly where we want to go.”
Blask said he expects the pair’s expertise in data and tech privacy to help lawyers in industry sectors across the firm’s 15-office footprint as well as to be instrumental in building a new corporate client base.
"The visions aligned and I think that to be in a very large law firm with lots of resources but one that also recognizes and understands being more flexible to service effectively those startups is honestly more than you could ask for," Maultsby said.
A Duquesne University School of Law graduate, Maultsby has since gone on to launch the Pittsburgh Tech Legal Clinic, an organization that provides free presentations and resources to startup companies throughout the region. He was recently accepted into the Netflix Legal Mentoring Program and in 2021, American Lawyer Magazine named him a Trailblazer in the Law.
