New firm-wide practice works directly with C-suite, in-house legal, technical, and development teams, starting from how each business actually uses AI, across vendor selection, deployment, and ongoing management, including document management and policy.
CLEVELAND, Ohio – KJK today announced the launch of its AI Strategy, Risk Management & Compliance practice, a firm-wide group that advises businesses across the full lifecycle of artificial intelligence adoption. The practice is chaired by Partner Ted Theofrastous, who also chairs the firm’s Intellectual Property, Technology & New Ventures practice, and draws on attorneys across KJK’s corporate, labor and employment, intellectual property, privacy and data security, and litigation disciplines.
The practice is structured around a simple premise: AI does not create entirely new categories of legal risk. It changes how existing risks arise, scale, and interact across a business. Rather than treating AI as a policy-drafting exercise or a subject for regulatory commentary, KJK’s practice focuses on the operational reality of adoption, including how AI intersects with contracts, vendor relationships, data governance, employee use, disclosure obligations, and day-to-day business workflows.
Theofrastous brings an engineer and operator’s perspective to that work. Before entering law, he spent a decade leading businesses through the technology transitions of the late 1980s and 1990s including: the move from mainframe to desktop computing, object-oriented programming, large-scale data platforms, and the introduction of the internet and of advanced and emerging collaboration and communications technologies into the workplace. The teams he led built next-generation systems that let smaller ventures compete against much larger firms. AI is not the first platform transition he has guided businesses through. It is the second. But unlike quick-hit phenomena like “Y2K”, AI-driven legal issues can’t be addressed by a one-time fix with an end date: the technology and the legal issues related to it will keep moving.
“AI governance drafted by someone who does not understand the legal issues, does not use the technology, or does not see how they are being used in the business tends to fall short and govern the wrong things. Our attorneys work in these systems every day, track the law and technology as it develops, and start from how each client actually operates. That is where strategic counsel comes from,” said Ted Theofrastous, Chair of KJK’s AI Strategy, Risk Management & Compliance practice.
In his 25 years of legal practice, Theofrastous has handled integrated intellectual property and corporate matters across the full arc of a technology business, including technology transactions and licensing, venture formation and finance, and the commercialization of complex innovation. He previously served as Chief Commercialization Counsel at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation and holds long-standing adjunct faculty appointments at Case Western Reserve University in its schools of law, medicine, and engineering, where he serves as Distinguished Practitioner in Residence.
That technical grounding runs through the practice. KJK attorneys work in the same AI platforms and legal research systems their clients are implementing, on their own files. The policies, vendor agreements, and governance frameworks the group drafts reflect operational lessons from that firsthand use rather than generic commentary. The gaps the team flags in AI vendor contracts are gaps its attorneys have encountered in practice.
“Most businesses are not asking whether to use AI. They are asking how to use it without creating exposure they cannot see. The risk rarely sits in one document or product. It sits in the gaps between an employee policy, a vendor agreement, a customer disclosure, and what people are actually doing at their desks. We built this practice to close those gaps,” said Theofrastous.
The practice advises on AI contracts and commercial structuring, data governance and privacy, employee use policies, disclosure architecture, automated decision-making risk, regulatory monitoring, and AI-related litigation, privilege, and investigations. The group conducts audits and compliance reviews across the full AI footprint of the business, including vendor and customer agreements, internal policies, cybersecurity controls, and practices involving confidentiality and privacy. It also provides AI crisis response for exposure events that do not fit the standard data breach playbook, such as an employee pasting confidential material into a consumer chatbot, a regulatory inquiry into training data, or mission-critical code generated by employees or contractors deployed without sufficient technical and management safeguards. The group also advises developers, SaaS companies, solution and service providers, and vendors on terms and structuring for deploying adjunct technologies such as Model Context Protocol (MCP) and API-based applications, including the privacy, confidentiality, cybersecurity, and regulated-data obligations that attach to them. Fixed-fee AI readiness assessments are available for businesses at any stage of adoption.
“Clients do not experience AI risk one practice group at a time, and we did not build this practice that way. This group coordinates counsel across the firm so a client’s AI strategy holds together across its contracts, its policies, its people, and its disputes,” said Jon Pinney, KJK Managing Partner.
The practice provides guidance on state, federal, and international AI laws as they emerge and how they apply to business, and works with technical, management, and legal staff to assess solutions. It advises on the ownership and process risks inherent in AI-developed products and intellectual property, from M&A diligence to litigation, and provides CLE programming and team consultations for corporate legal departments.
The launch comes as businesses move AI from pilot projects into production systems, vendor contracts, and daily workflows. The practice’s focus is practical: capture real efficiency, manage the risk that comes with it, and allocate liability to the party best positioned to bear it. More information about the practice, including the full attorney team, is available here.
About KJK
With offices in Cleveland and Columbus, KJK serves companies of all sizes and sectors, including Fortune 500 corporations, nonprofits, mid-market companies, small businesses, start-ups and other entrepreneurs. We are a full-service law firm built for business – and beyond. Our robust practice areas serve clients locally and nationally, with the combined experience of our skilled team of 50+ attorneys. For more information, visit kjk.com.