EXPERIENCED BY DESIGN
Insight is built around a simple idea: complicated matters benefit from experienced lawyers who stay close to the work.
Steven Ritcheson and Jacqueline "Jackie" Knapp-Burt bring decades of experience across complex litigation, intellectual property, technology, and business disputes. Clients work directly with them, not through layers of junior lawyers, from understanding the problem and developing strategy through resolution.
Steven W. Ritcheson
Founder & President
Litigator. Problem solver. Relentlessly curious.
Steven Ritcheson has spent more than three decades handling complex disputes, many involving technologies and industries he had to learn before he could effectively litigate them. That is not an incidental part of his practice. It is one of the things he likes most about it.
Much of Steven's career has been rooted in patent and intellectual property litigation, where understanding the technology is often as important as understanding the law. Over the years, his matters have involved technologies ranging from artificial intelligence to payment and financial systems, to telecommunications and computer software, to consumer products, railroad safety, and medical devices.
But Steven's practice has never fit neatly within the boundaries of a single area of the law.
He has represented companies, inventors, executives, and other clients in intellectual property, business and commercial disputes, shareholder matters, licensing and contract disputes, product-related claims, and other complex litigation. Some matters begin squarely within one area of law and stay there. Others change as the facts develop, revealing a technical issue or an additional legal claim or a problem behind the issue that initially brought the client through the door.
Steven is particularly drawn to complexity.
His approach is to understand a matter from the inside out: learn the technology, business or industry; identify the facts that actually matter; understand what the client needs to accomplish; and then determine the best path forward. Sometimes that means taking a case through trial or appeal. Sometimes it means finding an unexpected argument or bringing another area of law to bear. And sometimes the best result comes from solving the problem before a case ever gets that far.
That perspective has been shaped by an unusually broad career. Steven has practiced in firms ranging from boutique litigation practices to a major international law firm, served as outside general counsel to technology companies, and served as in-house General Counsel and Director of West Coast Operations for a boutique investment bank focused on the acquisition, securitization, and disposition of intellectual property. He has represented clients in state and federal courts, before the International Trade Commission, private arbitration, and in multinational legal proceedings outside the United States.
In 2016, Steven founded Insight around a deliberately different model: experienced attorneys remaining directly involved in the work clients hire them to do. Insight stays lean, assembling additional expertise and resources around a matter when they are needed rather than building matters around layers of lawyers.
For Steven, that means the substance of the case stays on his desk.
He works directly with clients, experts, and co-counsel throughout an engagement, from learning the problem and developing strategy through discovery, dispositive motions, trial, and appeal. It is a model that reflects both how he prefers to practice law and the kinds of matters he prefers to handle – the complicated ones.
Admissions
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State Bar of California
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U.S. District Court for the Central District of California
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U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California
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U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California
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U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California
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U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
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U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
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U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit
Education
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Santa Clara University School of Law - J.D., 1994
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University of Southern California - B.A., 1991
Leadership & Professional Experience
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Founder and President, Insight, A Professional Law Corporation
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Former Outside General Counsel to technology companies
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Former General Counsel and Director of West Coast Operations for an intellectual-property-focused boutique investment bank
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Former Judge Pro Tem, Santa Clara County
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Former President and member of State Bar and American Bar Association committees involving high technology, patent legislation, trademarks, and business and complex litigation
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Certified faculty member, National Academy of Continuing Legal Education
Jacqueline "Jackie" Knapp-Burt
Sr. Counsel
Advoate, Trusted partner. Counselor.
Jackie Burt has spent more than two decades helping clients navigate disputes where the details matter and the stakes are personal. Her practice has crossed intellectual property, contractual, and other complex disputes involving technologies ranging from mechanical and medical devices to GPS systems, gaming, computer technology, pharmaceuticals and consumer products.
But the technology or legal claim is only one part of the matter.
Jackie starts by understanding what matters to the client: what brought them to Insight, what is at risk, and what a successful outcome actually looks like. She brings persistence, practical judgment, and a deeply collaborative approach to determining the best path forward.
That approach has served her across a remarkably broad range of subject matter. Like Steven, Jackie is comfortable getting up to speed on unfamiliar products and technologies when a case demands it. She works through the details, identifies what matters, and keeps the larger objective in view.
Jackie has practiced in both large and small law firms, giving her experience with different approaches to litigation and client service. At Insight, she works directly with clients throughout their matters rather than handing the substance of the work through layers of junior lawyers.
For Jackie, that direct relationship matters. Clients aren't simply a case file or a set of claims. Understanding their priorities is part of understanding the problem, and often part of finding the right solution.
It is an approach that fits naturally within Insight's model: experienced lawyers staying close to the work, adapting to what a matter requires, and remaining focused on the problem the client actually needs solved.
Admissions
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State Bar of Georgia
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U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia
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U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia
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U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia
Education
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Georgia State University College of Law - J.D., 2003
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Miami University, Oxford, Ohio - B.S., 1999
Professional Memberships
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Georgia Bar Association