New Hires Expand the firm’s technology and real estate practices
Members Leah LaFramboise and Jason Ott, Counsel Curtis Wadsworth, and Associate Derrick L. Maultsby Jr. have joined Frost Brown Todd’s Pittsburgh office. LaFramboise is a real estate attorney with a focus on the energy industry. Ott and Wadsworth focus their practice on the technology industry. Maultsby also focuses on technology, along with privacy and data security, and assists companies in the sports and entertainment industry.
“Frost Brown Todd puts an emphasis on attorneys who truly understand the needs of specific industries. Those core principles are like roadways that lead toward Pittsburgh, where industries such as technology and real estate are booming,” said Pittsburgh Member-in-Charge Jordan Blask. “Leah, Jason, Curtis and Derrick embody our strategic initiatives. They allow Frost Brown Todd to better serve our local clients and develop new opportunities for the region’s entrepreneurs.”
LaFramboise focuses her practice on the real estate and energy industries. She helps companies in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia with solar and mineral leasing and acquisition transactions. A graduate of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, LaFramboise has extensive experience with title opinion preparation and due diligence relating to solar, oil and gas, and coal development. She also assists with commercial leasing and development, deed and mortgage preparation, and local counsel opinions for financing. She is a licensed title insurance agent in Pennsylvania.
Ott is a corporate/transactional attorney who works with clients as a business advisor and led his previous firm’s Tech and Data practice group. Ott regularly works with both for-profit and nonprofit clients as outside general counsel and assists clients across industries. He has specific experience in the innovation and emerging technology space, both for startup clients and larger institutional clients, and in the finance area. Ott has significant experience representing financial institutions in loan due diligence, documentation and facilitation, compliance matters, and bankruptcy/workouts. He is a graduate of Duquesne University School of Law and currently serves as the president of the Hon. Judith K. Fitzgerald Bankruptcy Inn of Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania.
Wadsworth focuses his practice on patent law. He works with companies in various technology sectors, producing IP strategies that create value for his clients. He is the founder and CEO of DorothyAI, a patent search platform that uses artificial intelligence to perform specific searches that are important for patent lawyers and their clients. Wadsworth has his Ph.D. in molecular, cellular and developmental biology from the University of Pittsburgh and his law degree from Duquesne University School of Law.
Maultsby focuses his practice on business advisement and capital transactions in the technology, data privacy, commercial business, and sports and entertainment industries. He helps develop and run various diversity and inclusion programs, including initiatives that provide free legal work to small Black-owned businesses. He founded the Pittsburgh Tech Legal Clinic, which provides free presentations and resources to startup companies throughout the region, and he recently was accepted into the Netflix Legal Mentoring Program. A Duquesne University School of Law graduate, he was named a 2021 Trailblazer by The American Lawyer magazine.