Light, where the law goes dark.
Policing runs on hard calls made in real time, usually where the law is least clear — and increasingly where new technology has outrun it. BrightRaven Strategies gives the people who make those calls, and those who train, lead, and equip them, answers they can stand behind.
A legal advisor the law-enforcement world turns to when the questions get hard.
For more than eleven years, Eric has guided law enforcement through the most demanding corners of public-safety law. As General Counsel to the Massachusetts Chiefs of Police Association, he advises more than 400 chiefs and their departments across an entire state, and brings that same counsel to the agencies, instructors, and innovators he works with through BrightRaven Strategies.
His edge is his vantage point. Eric sees leadership decisions the way they’re ultimately judged: later, in a grievance, an arbitration, an internal investigation, or a lawsuit, after the context has faded and only the record remains. His focus sits where the law is least settled and most consequential: the First Amendment, employment and labor law, internal affairs, and the rules now taking shape around emerging technology.
That same thinking runs through his forthcoming book, Stability Is Engineered, which argues that durable departments are built deliberately, long before the pressure that tests them arrives. A published author in Police Chief magazine and a frequent national speaker, Eric keeps the work practical, shaped by a connection to the field that started with his father’s career in it.
Admitted to Practice
Massachusetts · Rhode Island · Connecticut
U.S. District Courts, MA & RI · U.S. Court of Appeals, First Circuit
Education
J.D., New England School of Law
B.A., summa cum laude, American International College
Leadership & Service
General Counsel, Mass. Chiefs of Police Association
Immediate Past-Chair, IACP Legal Officers Section · IACP Artificial Intelligence Working Group · IACP Committee on Human & Civil Rights · Board of Directors, Municipal Police Institute
Recognition
Published author, Police Chief magazine
Frequent national & regional conference speaker
Four ways to put the law to work.
Senior-level training, consulting, and advisory — for the agencies and organizations doing the work, and for the companies building the tools they use.
Training & Instruction
In-person and online programs that translate the law into practice for officers, supervisors, and command staff, on everything from the First Amendment and employment law to public records, protest response, and criminal procedure.
Internal Affairs & Investigations
Consulting on complex internal investigations, especially the difficult matters where employment law and First Amendment questions collide, and where the analysis has to hold up.
AI & Emerging Technology
Consulting for agencies adopting artificial intelligence and for the companies building it: lawful and ethical deployment, policy and governance, regulatory compliance, and the constitutional questions that arrive with new technology in the field.
Authored Guides & Reference
Written guidance and reference materials on employment law and First Amendment issues, made for a law-enforcement audience and meant to be used, not filed away.
Putting AI to work — without getting ahead of the law.
Counsel for a field moving faster than its rules
Law enforcement is adopting AI faster than the law around it is settling — automated report writing, facial recognition, translation, predictive tools, and more. Eric advises the agencies deploying these systems and the companies building them: where the constitutional and privacy lines fall, what policy and governance belong in place first, and how to document the decisions so they hold up when they are reviewed later.
“The agencies that adopt AI well aren’t the fastest. They’re the ones who built the guardrails before they needed them.”
Where Eric helps
- AI policy, governance & oversight
- Constitutional & privacy review
- Vendor & procurement diligence
- Officer & command training on lawful use
Built for the people whose signature is on the decision.
Lead Lawfully — The Employment Law Playbook
A working session for public-sector supervisors and command staff. Progressive discipline, accommodation and leave, employee speech and social media, harassment and bias — the decisions that cross a supervisor’s desk every week, worked through so the record holds when it’s reviewed.
“Stability isn’t inherited. It’s engineered — one decision at a time.”
Who should be in the room
- New sergeants & lieutenants
- Veteran captains & command staff
- HR directors & town administrators
- Anyone whose signature is on a personnel decision
Programs are tailored across Eric’s areas of focus and delivered in person or online.
The questions that keep coming up.
A voice on the law of modern policing.
Eric speaks regularly at national and regional conferences on the legal questions reshaping law enforcement, from the First Amendment online to the lawful, ethical use of AI in the field. He keeps it current and plainspoken, with the credibility of someone who advises command staff for a living.
Invite Eric to speak →Selected Talks
Selected Publications
What chiefs and organizers take away.
He did a fantastic job presenting the topic in a relevant, valid, and accessible — but not dumbed-down — manner.
Eric’s ability to read the room, to flip between a PowerPoint and just discussion-style presentation, is perfect.
Eric is able to keep the audience engaged, informed, and laughing.
Across the world’s oldest stories, the raven appears as a bringer of light — clever enough to carry it out of the dark and set it where it can finally be seen. That instinct is the whole idea here: to reach the clarity others can’t, and bring it to where the stakes run highest.Why BrightRaven
Let’s bring some light to it.
Tell me what you’re working through — a training need, a consulting project, an AI or technology question, a difficult investigation, or a question the law hasn’t made easy. I’ll tell you how I can help.