As local high-tech companies grow from budding enterprises to full-fledged corporations, they are giving rise to the latest crop of influential brokers on the D.C. scene — their general counsel.

The hot new breed of in-house counsel doesn’t look, act, or think like their brethren working in more traditional industries. They are generally younger — at least to their job, if not in years — painfully ambitious, tech-savvy, and profits-driven.