Joe Anderson      he / him

Of Counsel Attorney

✦ Academically accomplished

✦ Make dreams happen mindset

✦ Hands-on business experience

In addition to being an attorney, Joe is a serial entrepreneur and has been the owner or co-owner of a host of entrepreneurial ventures in the music, film, television, ed-tech, and personal security industries.. 

He is experienced in both business and intellectual property law and has worked with clients on formation, contracts, risk mitigation, regulatory preparedness and compliance, legal project management, growth structuring, and how best to share and protect both brand and intellectual property assets. 

He sees himself as an attorney, a businessman, teacher, a mentor, and a motivator. He joins Rational Unicorn Legal Services as someone who is excited about business ownership and the opportunities it brings to people of all backgrounds. He is passionate about making sure clients are informed about their options and have the guidance to make the best decisions that work for them. He has substantial experience working with non-profit organizations and as a law school professor as well.

Joe grew up on a cattle ranch on the Alberta border of Montana his great-grandfather settled in 1887. His grandfather used to say the ranch “isn’t in the middle of Nowhere, but you can see it from there.” Although he started off as a cowboy, unlike his peers, Joe was interested in things like books, music, and warm weather, so it’s not surprising he aspired to leave the life he was born to and go out in the world to find his way. Landing at Stanford University, Joe majored in political science with an emphasis on Cold War diplomacy and strategic weapons management. He coupled his pursuit of this rather hardcore major with a lot of musical theater participation and following the Grateful Dead around. It was the 80s and this made a certain amount of sense at the time.

Continuing his education in international diplomacy, Joe next attended law school at Georgetown University Law School, where it excelled in Moot Court and was an editor for the Law & Policy in International Business journal, graduating cum laude just in time for the Berlin Wall to fall, ending the Cold War and his prospects of gainful employment in the field. Recalling that the Bay Area’s weather was much better than the East Coast, as were its outdoor music venues, Joe returned to San Francisco and took a job at a large California law firm, Pettit & Martin, working as an intellectual property and First Amendment litigator

Three years later, Pettit & Martin was the site of the horrific 101 California Shooting, a senseless act of violence that remains San Francisco’s largest mass murder and presaged sadly innumerable future such tragedies. Joe’s reaction to the trauma of losing friends and colleagues was to quit the big firm practice of law and join a rock band. It was the 90s, and this, too, made a certain amount of sense at the time. Although the band Joe joined was reasonably successful (August West on Spotify, if you must know), it turned out the world did not need another keyboard player so much as the creative and artistic community he joined needed an attorney to represent their interests. Hence was born the entertainment law practice Joe pursues to this day. During a stint serving as the Professor of Entertainment Law at the then UC California Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, he was introduced by students to the power of the Internet to rewrite the fundamental rules of the music business. Hence was born the digital media practice and career in entrepreneurial ventures that has been the hallmark of the rest of this story.

Beginning by incorporating and representing through exit the pre-Napster start-up IUMA (Internet Underground Music Archive) and continuing through the entire Dot-Com boom, Joe represented entertainment and entertainment-related companies and artists as they sought to establish whole new distribution methods and wrest ownership and control of their creative output from the major labels and studios. Included among these were Seventh Wave Productions, an early artist-owned digital record label co-founded by Joe that is still in business; IUMA; FanAsylum.com; and the ahead-of-its-time VOD distributor Tranz-Send Broadcasting Network (Clickmovie.com).

In 2000, sensing the ongoing destruction of the American economy he had helped create through the Dot-Com boom, Joe fled to Los Angeles as co-founder of A Happy Place, a film production company including Lance Bass of *NSYNC, former Tom Hanks development executive Wendy Thorlakson, and future VIX CEO Rich Hull, producing teen films and television projects including the Miramax and Weinstein Company releases On the Line and Lovewrecked. He also partnered with former New Line Business Affairs chief Phillip Rosen in building Rosen & Anderson, LLP, an entertainment & digital media law boutique representing a host of creative artists and start-ups, co-locating both firms in a Frank Gehry building on Venice Beach at the center of what would eventually become known as “Silicon Beach.”

With the country facing another economic melt-down due to the collapse of unsustainable mortgage-backed derivatives, Joe took a break from Hollywood, first co-founding an ahead-of-its-time solar power company in Colorado and writing a satirical novel about the music business (Face the Music on Amazon, if you must know). Next up he co-founded a very well-timed Northern California-based education technology company producing the award-winning StudySync educational platform. It would go on to a successful exit as schools around the country moved to digital media sources to replace traditional textbooks and distance learning became the hot opportunity nationally and internationally during the pandemic. Throughout, however, Joe always maintained his own legal practice representing entertainment and entrepreneurial creatives and ventures.

Most recently, Joe co-founded Reflex Protect, a non-lethal controlling force and self-defense product manufacturer. RP initially focused its efforts on protecting individuals and sensitive workplaces where defense against the threat of violence could not safely and effectively be provided by existing measures such as pepper sprays, Tasers, or firearms. Reflex Protect products turned out to be so effective for these markets that law enforcement and corrections departments, under steadily increasing scrutiny over proper use of force, have begun adopting this new technology to improve officer and subject safety alike. In 2021, Joe was named a Forbes Next 1000 Entrepreneur (American Entrepreneurs Making a Difference) for his work with Reflex Protect. While still involved as a member of the Board of Directors, in 2023, Joe turned over company operations to a team more expert than he in the law enforcement market.

Currently, Joe’s focus is centered around using his eclectic academic, legal, creative, and business background to educate and help other creative thinkers and doers realize their dreams. To that end, Joe recently taught Contract Law to the entire first year class at the University of Montana School of Law and is actively pursuing other law and business school teaching opportunities. Joe joined Rational Unicorn precisely because of its mission to provide top drawer legal services to small businesses, nonprofits, and artists/entertainers in a pay-as-you-go transparent, accessible law firm model. 

Joe once again lives steps off the sand in Venice Beach. The family ranch in Montana has survived just fine without him.