Polin Shook

Jacob is a seasoned trial lawyer with extensive plaintiff-side experience. He represents consumers, small businesses, public entities, as well as investors, founders, and innovative companies in disputes ranging from complex commercial litigation, crypto fraud, unfair competition, and contract disputes. When a deal goes bad, assets are misappropriated, or in other complex situations, Jacob formulates strategies to aggressively and efficiently pursue and vindicate rights and claims.

Jacob also has substantial experience pursuing class and mass actions against Fortune 500 companies. This includes a trial victory in opioid litigation with his former colleagues at Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, LLP where they obtained a $230 million recovery for the People of San Francisco, and won the Daily Journal’s “California Lawyers of the Year” award in 2023. In another case brought on behalf of victims of the 2015 Refugio Oil Spill in Santa Barbara, they obtained a $200 million settlement from a large publicly-traded oil company shortly before trial. He also litigated similar cases against other large technology, financial, insurance, oil, and chemical companies.

Jacob enjoys working with clients, experts, and colleagues to learn how different industries function and the conditions that give rise to consumer fraud. He tries to bring a nuanced perspective to that analysis, as an attorney who previously represented large corporations at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, LLP. In privacy and advertising-related litigation, he also draws on his pre-law school experience as a digital media buyer for technology companies and progressive political campaigns.

Jacob grew up in Oakland, California, where he now practices. He and Nick have been friends for 20+ years, going back to their time together on the UC Berkeley debate team. There, at Cal, Jacob led the debate team to the #1 national ranking in America. In his spare time, he enjoys cycling, hot yoga, and traveling.

A lawyer who has shipped code. Nick has practiced law for more than ten years, licensed in California, Washington, and Nevada, and has litigated through the appellate level. He represents founders, investors, and technology companies in litigation and serves as outside general counsel to fast-growing companies, from AI and cybersecurity platforms to consumer products. Where a dispute or a deal turns on how the technology actually works, Nick reads the code himself.

Nick wrote software at Apple. You will not need a translator to explain your stack, your architecture, or what actually broke. There he was an engineer responsible for a 30 petabyte financial data lake covering pricing information, activations, and install base, some of the more important data sets at the company. He was an early engineer at CryptoMove, a cybersecurity startup, and a Y Combinator founder. He also spent a year teaching programming, including AI-assisted agentic coding, and did that all around the world, teaching developers how to program with agents in today’s world.

Prior to that, Nick worked as a startup lawyer. His wins include a $26 million M&A for a cannabis company and a successful § 1983 appeal in the Nevada Court of Appeals. He has advised many startups on the agreements that decide whether a company scales, for clients that sell into Airbnb, Netflix, and LinkedIn, and he works with Bay Area venture funds on financings from seed to Series E.

Nick and Jacob met on the UC Berkeley debate team and have been friends for 20+ years, the start of the network of elite litigators the firm still co-counsels with today. Nick practices and teaches hot yoga. In his spare time, he enjoys traveling and astrology, and he will read your tarot.

One of the top debaters in the country. Emilio researches legal issues around AI and manages all aspects of our clients’ cases and matters.