Minc Law

Focus and practice areas

Online defamation makes up the core of the work at Minc Law. The firm handles libel and slander claims that begin on websites, social platforms, forums and review sites. Both individuals and businesses come to it with the same basic problem: something damaging has been published about them online.

The firm also offers online reputation management, internet content removal and responses to online harassment. It handles blackmail and sextortion matters, revenge porn removal and consumer review removal. Online investigations, digital reputation monitoring, public relations, cybersecurity and digital privacy work, and expert witness services round out what the firm lists.

That grouping makes sense once you follow how a defamation problem actually unfolds. A client discovers a false post. The post spreads. Someone has to find out who wrote it, get it taken down where possible, and decide whether a lawsuit is worth filing. Minc Law describes doing all three parts.

Who the work is for

The firm represents individuals and businesses. A private person targeted by an anonymous account and a company hit with a campaign of fake reviews face different legal problems, though the underlying skill set overlaps. Minc Law offers free case evaluations to both.

How the team is built

Aaron Minc founded the firm in 2018. He attended Miami University and Case Western Reserve School of Law. The firm carries his name, and the defamation focus traces back to him.

Michael Pelagalli practices at the firm out of Cleveland, Ohio. He earned a marketing degree from Miami University's Farmer School of Business in 2012, then a Juris Doctor from Cleveland State University Cleveland-Marshall College of Law in 2015. Before joining Minc Law he worked as an associate at Reminger Co., L.P.A. and at Coakley Lammert Co., L.P.A. His practice covers defamation and business matters.

The marketing degree is worth pausing on. In my opinion, a lawyer who understands how brands get built online has a useful head start on cases about how brands get torn down there. His two prior firms were both Ohio civil litigation shops, so he arrived with courtroom mileage already behind him.

Litigation experience on the bench

Daniel A. Powell litigates internet-related cases at Minc Law, including online defamation and content removal. He holds a Bachelor of Arts from Greensboro College and a Juris Doctor from Cleveland-Marshall College of Law. He represents businesses and individuals in state and federal courts.

His listed experience covers jury trials, bench trials, arbitrations, mediations and administrative proceedings. Those are separate skills. A lawyer comfortable in front of a jury is not automatically comfortable in an arbitration, and the reverse holds too. Having someone on staff who has done both matters in a field where cases can resolve through many different channels.

Two of the three named attorneys hold degrees from Cleveland-Marshall College of Law. The founder went to Case Western Reserve. All three sit inside the Cleveland legal community, which suggests a team recruited locally and grown in place.

What the record shows

Minc Law states it has litigated over 350 cases across 26 states and 5 countries. It also states it has removed more than 200,000 pieces of online content. Both figures come from the firm itself, and readers should weigh them as such.

The geographic spread deserves attention. Twenty-six states means the firm has appeared well outside Ohio. Defamation law varies state by state, sometimes sharply: statutes of limitation differ, public-figure standards get applied differently, and retraction rules change what a plaintiff can recover. A firm working across that many jurisdictions has to keep track of those differences.

Five countries adds another layer. Cross-border defamation runs into questions of which court can hear the case and whether a US judgment means anything abroad. The SPEECH Act limits enforcement of foreign defamation judgments in American courts, which complicates matters in both directions.

Removal versus litigation

The 200,000 content-removal figure and the 350-case figure describe two different kinds of work. Removal often happens through platform policies, DMCA notices, terms-of-service complaints and direct negotiation. No judge is involved. It's faster and cheaper for the client when it works.

Litigation comes in when removal fails or when the client wants damages. The firm describes identifying anonymous online offenders, which usually means subpoenas to platforms and internet service providers to unmask a poster. That step alone requires a filed case in most situations.

A firm handling both paths can pick the cheaper route first and escalate when it stalls. As a reviewer, that strikes me as the sensible way to structure this kind of practice, since most clients want the content gone more than they want a trial date.

Where the firm sits and how it's found

Minc Law works from Orange Village, a suburb east of Cleveland. Its lawyers are described in connection with Cleveland, and the firm's local roots run through the Cleveland-area law schools its attorneys attended.

The firm maintains profiles on Facebook, X (formerly Twitter) and LinkedIn. For a practice built around what happens on internet platforms, presence on those platforms has a practical logic to it: the lawyers work in the same spaces where the disputes start.

Its website carries a large volume of explanatory material about defamation, content removal and online harassment. Prospective clients researching a problem at 2am tend to find firms through that kind of writing rather than through referrals.

Reading the listing as a whole

The firm has been operating since 2018, which puts it at seven years of practice as of this writing. That's long enough to have built a body of work and short enough that it grew up alongside the platforms it deals with. Minc Law started after the major social networks were already mature, so its practice was designed for that environment from day one.

What a prospective client can verify here: three named attorneys with stated law schools, a founding year, a defined practice focus, and firm-reported case and removal counts. The attorney credentials check out against named institutions. The case figures rely on the firm's own accounting, as such figures usually do.

Defamation work asks for a particular combination. Someone has to know platform mechanics well enough to get content pulled, and know civil procedure well enough to unmask an anonymous defendant and take a case to verdict. Minc Law's named attorneys have backgrounds in both areas, with Powell's trial and arbitration experience and Pelagalli's litigation years at two Ohio firms.

Minc Law concentrates on one area of law and lists services that all connect to it. The firm reports work in 26 states and 5 countries from a base in Orange Village, Ohio.