I work with technology businesses in Estonia and across the EU as ongoing outside counsel, with a focus on SaaS, artificial intelligence, data protection, and regulatory compliance. Legal questions tend to carry the most weight during the product and service development stage, and addressing them at that point saves the most time, money, and headaches. Once the service or product is live, the contracts are signed, and the users are onboard, altering course is almost always harder and more expensive. Whether that means structuring a new service, making sense of regulatory requirements, protecting intellectual property, or simply having an information technology law specialist in the room who understands what you are building and why – I help build things that are legally sound from the start.
Great services and products are legally sound.
Your outside counsel for building, launching, and protecting technology products and services.
Services
01Day-to-day legal support
The questions that come up regularly – SaaS agreements, intellectual property, licensing terms, data processing agreements, terms of service, vendor contracts, product safety, employment matters, internal decisions with a legal dimension. You get clear, fast answers from someone who already knows your business.
Risk prevention
Legal problems are usually cheaper to prevent than to fix. I help identify vulnerabilities and risks in your service or product's operating principles, terms of service, data processing practices, commercial relationships, and applicable regulations before they attract regulatory attention or lead to litigation.
Strategic advice
Launching in a new EU market, structuring a platform, choosing between licensing models, preparing for new regulation – these decisions benefit from legal input that is commercially aware, not just technically correct.
Disputes
When a matter turns contentious, it helps to have a lawyer who already knows the background. I handle disagreements and litigation, and I approach these with your commercial interests in mind.
Fee
02I work on a fixed monthly fee. You know how much you pay and what you pay for. Typical ongoing engagements range from EUR 500 to EUR 5,000 per month, excluding VAT, depending on the company's profile and the level of support needed. The fee is shaped by your needs.
My story
03I came to law through language. In the years before Estonia's accession to the European Union, there was strong demand for legal translators, and as an English translator I had the opportunity to work with many legal services providers in Estonia. Legal translation is inherently an exercise in comparative law: to communicate the meaning behind the words, you need to understand the broader context, including the legal differences between jurisdictions. Constant exposure to diverse legal texts created a practical need to understand law more deeply. Over the next two decades, I earned a bachelor's in law, then a master's in law, then a master's in IT law, and eventually a PhD.
In my doctoral research, I sought to answer – in the context of self-driving vehicles – a question that comes up in my practice as an attorney almost every day: how should existing or proposed legal rules be interpreted in situations created by novel technologies that the legislators could not have foreseen?
Before starting my own practice, I worked at PricewaterhouseCoopers Legal in Tallinn, first as an IT lawyer and then as an attorney. Since founding my own firm, I have worked closely with SaaS companies, in particular in the mobility, legal technology, and language technology sectors. These projects have given me first-hand experience of the legal, business, and technical questions that arise when developing services and bringing them to a global market – as well as the realisation that I could serve my clients even better with a thorough understanding of the common law tradition.
That is why I am currently pursuing an LLB (Hons) in Law at the University of Essex in England, with the aim of qualifying as a solicitor and building a cross-border practice. For businesses operating across Estonian, EU and English law, my aim is to be the kind of lawyer who understands all three systems substantively.
Education and experience
04Education
Experience
Languages
I advise clients mainly in Estonian and English, but I am working towards the same level of fluency in German and Japanese.
Contact
06Advokaadibüroo Taivo Liivak OÜ
A. Haava 5-3, Tartu 50409, Estonia
Reg. no 16789030
VAT no EE102743634
info[at]liivak.ee
Mon–Fri 9:00–17:00, by prior appointment