How engagements are staffed
How the work is staffed, and what it has to clear before it ships.
Every engagement passes through five roles. Whoever holds them, the review role belongs to someone who did not produce the work.
We do not publish a full roster, because some roles are intentionally private. This page is organized around responsibility instead: before work begins, you receive the name, role, and responsibilities of everyone with access to your matter.
The firm is eighteen people as of August 2026.
Depending on scope, work may be performed by employees and by vetted independent specialists. We will tell you which. Review is always performed by someone who did not produce the work being reviewed.
The structure is designed to keep review independent. A second reader who was not involved in the work checks the evidence, language, and measurements before a deliverable leaves the firm.
Charles Zakarin leads the firm and sets the strategy in every matter. Day-to-day conduct of an engagement belongs to the named engagement lead, who remains the point of accountability throughout.
Roles
Who touches a matter.
These run concurrently rather than in sequence. On a small matter one person may hold several of them; the one always held separately is review.
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Engagement lead
Owns the matter end to end and is the person you speak to. Conducts the assessment, writes the sequencing plan, and signs off before anything goes out under your name. Does not change mid-engagement except by your agreement.
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Research and documentation
Builds and maintains the baseline: the URLs, positions, captures, autocomplete states across regions, and verbatim AI answers. Every claim of improvement is measured against their record.
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Technical implementation
Entity definition, structured data, and cross-source reconciliation. The least visible work in the firm and the foundation the rest depends on.
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Editorial
Develops and drafts material for publication, then works through your revisions until the argument is genuinely yours. Nothing is submitted anywhere without your explicit sign-off.
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Review
A second reader who was not involved in producing the work. Checks factual accuracy, that claims are supported, and that nothing violates the published standard before it leaves the firm.
Review gates
What the work has to clear.
These are the checks that exist specifically to catch our own errors. They are published so that you can ask whether one was applied.
- No external request is sent until the engagement lead has approved the evidence package.
- No material is published under a client's name until the client has approved the final text in writing.
- No report is issued without a second reader confirming every stated measure against the baseline.
- No engagement proceeds past assessment without the client's written approval of the plan and its stated limits.
- Any request that could conceal ongoing harm is escalated to the founder and tested against Our Standard before work continues.
Leadership
Charles Zakarin
Charles Zakarin founded this practice out of his own experience of being described inaccurately in public and discovering how little recourse existed. The account is on the record, in the first person, including the parts that are unflattering.
From the founderYou will know who is leading your matter.
From the outset, the named engagement lead remains accountable unless you agree to a change.
The first conversation and the preliminary review that follows it are free, and nothing is owed afterwards.
Whether your situation calls for a lawyer is one of the most common questions we are asked, and it is usually settled in the first conversation. Where counsel should be involved we will say so and work at their direction, and where it is not a legal matter we will tell you that too. Either way, the question is ours to answer rather than yours to work out first. How we hold information