Rural Regeneration
Mud Lake Legal is a specialized law practice dedicated to helping rural American communities solve their toughest problems through decentralized finance ("DeFi").
We focus on real-world applications of blockchain solutions that transcend the limitations of legacy municipal finance and traditional grass-roots efforts.
Our Practice
Making a difference for real people in the real world.
From the Catskill Mountain farms of New York to the working waterfronts of Downeast Maine, we work in and for the betterment of communities where DeFi can play an outsized role for town and small business financing solutions.
About Mud Lake Legal
Our Roots
Mud Lake Legal was initially founded in 2016 by Kianga Ellis to assist alternative asset managers, commodities merchants and institutional investors with their trading agreements, regulatory compliance and other legal matters involved in the global over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives and physical commodities trading markets.
In recent year
Mud Lake Legal was initially founded in 2016 by Kianga Ellis to assist alternative asset managers, commodities merchants and institutional investors with their trading agreements, regulatory compliance and other legal matters involved in the global over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives and physical commodities trading markets.
In recent years our work has focused exclusively on the emerging digital assets sector, blockchain, distributed ledger technology applications, cryptocurrencies and peer-to-peer finance.
Kianga began her legal career in the late 1990s in the derivatives practice group at Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP in New York City after graduating from Spelman College and the Yale Law School. As U.S. Outside Counsel to the International Swaps and Derivatives Association (“ISDA”) she coordinated the work of several sell-side working groups that published documentation and resolved legal, commercial, regulatory and operational issues facing derivatives markets, including for the then-emerging credit derivatives market and launch of the Euro.
In later roles prior to founding the firm, Kianga gained extensive deal and transactional experience supporting the fixed-income derivatives, currencies/FX, derivatives prime brokerage and energy trading businesses at Goldman Sachs; derivatives and physical commodities trading at Lehman Brothers; and global commodities merchant trading businesses at Castleton Commodities International.