Act I Page 1
You Get the Letter
A FINRA examiner wants documents. The SEC wants a call. The word "immediate" appears suspiciously often. Your stomach drops — and you'd rather not read it at the kitchen table.
I'm Ryan P. Smith — a securities and regulatory attorney representing broker-dealers, RIAs, and financial professionals nationwide in FINRA examinations, SEC investigations, and the kinds of letters that arrive on Friday afternoon.
"Don't panic. The answer's almost never 42. And — bring a towel."
Three-Act Structure
The plot is the same every time. Here's the rewrite.
A FINRA examiner wants documents. The SEC wants a call. The word "immediate" appears suspiciously often. Your stomach drops — and you'd rather not read it at the kitchen table.
We triage, we respond, we triage again. Plain English first, regulator English second. You see what we send before it leaves the building — because this is your career on the page.
Matter closes — or it doesn't, but you know where you stand either way. Your clients never noticed. Your book of business is intact. Curtain.
The Director's Cut
Ryan lives in Arlington, VA with his wife, his dog Cheeto (also known as "The Compliance Department"), and an unreasonable number of framed movie posters.
Meet the Attorney
Before opening this firm, I spent decades inside broker-dealers and investment advisers — building compliance programs, running supervision, and yes, on the receiving end of regulator inquiries. I know what good looks like because I've built it. I also know what bad looks like because I've fixed it.
Today I represent broker-dealers, RIAs, and individual financial professionals in FINRA examinations, SEC investigations, internal investigations, and the everyday compliance questions that arrive in your inbox between 4:30 and 5:00 PM on a Friday.
My clients get the same judgment and instincts I used to keep regulators comfortable inside big firms — without the big-firm invoice.
The Practical Bit
Regulatory correspondence has its own dialect. We translate — both ways. You tell us what happened in plain English. We tell the regulator what happened in their English, with the citations they expect.
Free, Actually Free
I've been writing about securities regulation for years — sometimes with citations, sometimes with asides. Take what's useful.
Forty-two things I wish someone had told me on day one of running a broker-dealer. With footnotes.
Download PDF →Written Supervisory Procedures that regulators — and your staff — can actually read.
Download PDF →Consolidated Audit Trail reporting without losing your weekend — or your sanity.
Download PDF →Open-source thinking on broker-dealer formation, with the boring parts marked.
Download PDF →Featured Service
Forty-five minutes. We look at your WSPs, your supervisory system, your last exam letter — and tell you what we'd fix first. No charge. No obligation. No surprise invoice.
From the Blog
Schrödinger's compliance program: what you don't know IS happening to you.
Why Douglas Adams wrote the unofficial handbook for securities lawyers.
A short story about regulatory timing, and what to do before Monday.
Get in Touch
Use the form, or call directly. We answer every inquiry ourselves — no intake queue, no offshore call center, no "your call is very important to us."
Phone
(703) 778-0001Office
Arlington, Virginia
Serving clients nationwide — no geographic limits.