Well, sure, but he practiced as a corp/finance lawyer, not a criminal or IP attorney (which seem to be the relevant facets here). And in the OP he says, specifically, "I’m not going to go into the legal issues around this because I’m just not qualified."
That's true, but his opinion is probably worth more than some random guy at least in this respect
Hindsight is 20/20. Being a lawyer didn't help him to put any contracts in place before committing to the Crunchpad project...