PracticePro

Friday, March 16, 2018
Latham & Watkins LLP
505 Montgomery St #2000
San Francisco, CA 94111

Register

SCHEDULE

CONFERENCE & RECEPTION

Professional Development:  In this full-day conference, you will learn:

• Operations and economics of law firms and organizations
• How summer programs work, including the evaluation process
• Practical tools on how to excel in your assignments and exceed expectations
• How to maximize the opportunities presented in firm social events
• How to stand out in interviews
• How to create a career development plan, including identifying and building on your strengths
• Effective methods and habits for developing your professional brand internally and in the legal community
• Client expectations and introduction to business development
• How to develop a fulfilling and sustaining legal career

Recruiting:  Students who attend the conference will be invited to submit their application materials to PracticePro’s law firm partners and participate in various recruiting opportunities with the same.

TUITION & PRICING

Conference
Tuition – $ 350 (includes evening reception)
Register for the Conference here.  Click here for scholarship info.

***SAN FRANCISCO CAREER CONFERENCE IS SOLD OUT***

Recruiting Reception
Admission to the Reception is complimentary for all conference attendees.  If you are only interested in attending the evening Diversity Reception, you may purchase your ticket – here.

SPEAKERS & INSTRUCTORS

Niki Kahn, PracticePro 
Niki Khoshzamir Kahn (Moore) is the founder and CEO of PracticePro, and a lecturer at U.C. Berkeley School of Law. At PracticePro, she leads all aspects of the organization including product development, strategic partnerships, operations, and publications. Niki teaches transition-to-practice skills to law students and attorneys and speaks at law schools across the country. She also consults with law firms to strengthen training and diversity programs, including helping diverse and first-generation associates to succeed as attorneys. Niki developed a skills course – The Junior Attorney: Expectations, Responsibilities, and Realities – for Berkeley Law in 2011, which she has been co-teaching since.

Prior to founding PracticePro, she was an attorney for over six years at the global firm of Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr LLP. She focused her practice on intellectual property litigation and trade sanctions compliance. Niki has extensive experience representing companies and individuals in federal and state courts, and in all stages of litigation including trial. She was recognized by the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal as one of the top “40 under 40″ professionals.

Niki is also the founder and former president of the Northern California Chapter of the Iranian American Bar Association. She received her B.S. in Biology, summa cum laude, from Texas Southern University, and J.D. from Berkeley Law. Before law school, Niki was a research assistant at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center and the Baylor College of Medicine Human Genome Sequencing Center.

Ola Adekunle, Google

Brooks Beard, VMware

Brooks Beard is the Vice President & Deputy General Counsel – Litigation, Employment, Cybersecurity, and Regulatory Compliance at VMware, where he oversees a global team of legal professions covering subject matter areas such as litigation, government inquiries and investigations, employment law issues, cybersecurity, regulatory compliance, and VMware’s Dawn Raid Program. He is also a member of VMware’s Cybersecurity Response Team, Emergency Response Team, and Crisis Management Team. Mr. Beard previously served for a year as the interim lead of VMware’s global Ethics & Compliance Team. Mr. Beard joined VMware in 2014 after spending 18 years in private practice, including 17 years at Morrison & Foerster in its San Francisco office, where he became a partner in January 2005. While at Morrison & Foerster, Mr. Beard had a broad-based litigation practice representing clients in state and federal court, as well as before state and federal administrative agencies, focusing on intellectual property (patent, trademark, and trade secrets), false advertising, environmental, breach of contract, trade secret, white collar criminal, and civil rights matters, among other types of matters. In addition to being admitted to practice in several Federal District Courts, Mr. Beard is admitted to practice before the Eighth, Ninth, Eleventh, and Federal Circuit U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeals and the Supreme Court of the United States.

In October 2007, then-San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom appointed Mr. Beard to serve as a Commissioner on the San Francisco Rent Stabilization and Arbitration Board—a position he held until 2013. And from 2009 until 2014, Mr. Beard sat on the Eco-Entrepreneurship Advisory Council and the Council of Legal Advisors at the Donald Bren School of Environmental Science Management, University of California, Santa Barbara.

Mr. Beard received his B.A. from the University of California, Santa Barbara, his J.D., cum laude, from Vermont Law School, and his LL.M., with distinction, from the Georgetown University Law Center.

Joi Bourgeois,Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe

Joi Bourgeois is Orrick’s Global Head of Diversity & Inclusion. She leads Orrick’s efforts to promote diverse and women lawyers to leadership in our firm and our profession. She works directly with the firm’s clients who share our commitment to diversity.

She provides coaching to our lawyers to help them advance. She consults with the firm’s practice and office leadership in pursuing their teams’ diversity goals, including recruitment and sponsorship at all levels. In addition, she helps to introduce innovative programs that foster a stronger sense of community among diverse and women lawyers at Orrick and among our clients.

Joi brings to the role 17 years of experience as a professional coach, coupled with the perspective of a former practicing lawyer. As a partner in the talent development firm Greiner, she has coached 1,500+ attorneys at all levels. She has deep knowledge of the unique opportunities and challenges women, ethnically diverse and LGBTQ attorneys encounter in developing relationships with clients and sponsors. She practiced corporate law at predecessor firms to Clifford Chance and Richards, Kibbe & Orbe. She is sought after as a speaker by law schools and professional organizations, including as a driver of diversity initiatives and programming at the New York City Bar Association.

A graduate of New York University Law School and Northwestern University, Joi speaks French fluently and lives in Westchester and Fairfield Counties with her partner, her two athletic sons and a Pekingese and Pitt Bull.

Gregory Call, Crowell & Moring
Greg Call is a partner in Crowell & Moring’s San Francisco office and serves as head of that office. He is chair of the firm’s Commercial Litigation Group and has an active trial practice representing both plaintiffs and defendants in complex commercial cases. He has represented defendants in class actions, government investigations, unfair competition actions, environmental actions and breach of contract actions. He has represented plaintiffs (varying from large corporations to small municipalities) in business torts and breach of contract actions, helping them recover over $1 billion. He has successfully represented numerous retail clients as plaintiffs, recovering hundreds of millions of dollars for them.

Mr. Call has an active trial practice, regularly trying cases to verdict and practicing in courts in more than 20 states. In 2015, Mr. Call has represented retailers in two trials. As defendant secured defense judgment and as plaintiff secured liability determination. In 2013 in a court trial in San Francisco Superior Court, Mr. Call led a Crowell & Moring team that obtained declaratory relief for The Regents of the University of California to future payments of $32 million from a license of The Regents to Medivation, Inc. In a related jury trial in San Francisco Superior Court, he led a Crowell & Moring team that defeated fraud claims of hundreds of millions of dollars brought by Medivation against UCLA Professor Michael Jung. Also recently he obtained a favorable jury verdict in federal court in San Francisco for an export company, obtained injunctive relief for a car rental company in a trial in state court in Illinois, and recovered attorneys’ fees in a jury trial in Texas.

Mr. Call has been recognized by Chambers USA 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016 as a leading lawyer in the CA Litigation: General Commercial category. He is also AV Peer Review Rated and has been selected as a California Super Lawyer. Mr. Call graduated with honors from Stanford University, and received his M.A. in Economics from UC Berkeley, and his J.D. from Berkeley Law.

Peter Chang, Department of Justice

Peter Chang is a Deputy Attorney General in the Government Law Section of the California Department of Justice. He represents the Governor, the Attorney General, the Secretary of State, and other state officers and agencies in civil actions in federal and state courts. His practice primarily consists of defending the constitutionality and application of a wide-range of state laws, including gun control laws, election laws, labor laws, pension laws, animal welfare laws, and government finance laws.

Prior to joining the California Department of Justice, Mr. Chang spent ten years in private practice, including at Kirkland and Ellis and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich and Rosati, where he focused on patent litigation.

Mr. Chang is active in the Asian American Bar Association and was a co-chair of its Judiciary Committee from 2014-2017. He received his J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center and his B.S. from the University of Texas at Austin.

Sara Clark, Shute Mihaly & Weinberger

Sara Clark joined Shute, Mihaly & Weinberger LLP in 2010 and is an associate at the firm. Ms. Clark’s practice focuses on representation of environmental groups, Indian tribes, and public agencies in CEQA and NEPA litigation, federal Indian and public land law, initiative and election law, and land conservation. Ms. Clark represents clients in litigation and provides advice and counseling for non-litigation matters. She played a key role representing local environmental organizations in their successful challenge to an ill-sited housing development in the City of Brea, and was part of the SMW litigation team that successfully challenged the development of a proposed new city in rural Riverside County. She also has worked on a series of actions seeking to recover possession of tribal lands from non-tribal members who refuse to pay rent or vacate the properties. In non-litigation matters, Ms. Clark regularly advises land trusts on complex legal issues, including conservation easement drafting and enforcement. She also advises the Colorado River Indian Tribes in its efforts to ensure cultural resource protection on public lands facing pressure from utility-scale energy developers.

Ms. Clark graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, where she earned a certificate in environmental law, was elected to the Order of the Coif, and served as Editor in Chief of the Ecology Law Quarterly. Ms. Clark is past chair of the Board of Directors of Bay Area Wilderness Training and a member of the Peninsula Open Space Trust NextGen Committee.

Michael E. Coke, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati
Michael Coke is a partner at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, where his practice focuses on a wide variety of corporate, securities, and related matters, primarily for technology companies.

Michael’s practice spans the full range of corporate transactions, including representing clients in connection with initial public offerings and other securities offerings, corporate governance and disclosure matters, mergers and acquisitions, and venture-backed private financings. He also has experience advising on secondary market transactions for institutional purchasers. Michael has worked on matters in numerous technology and other industries, including cloud computing software and services, social media and online gaming, network services and devices, data security, biotechnology and life sciences, semiconductor, consumer products, media, public utilities, clean technology, natural resources, insurance, and finance.

Michael has been with WSGR since 2006. He started his legal career in New York and Singapore, focusing on public and private offerings of equity, equity-linked securities, and investment-grade and high-yield debt, on both the company and the underwriter side, in addition to mergers and acquisitions and other corporate matters. He also spent six months on secondment to the legal department of JPMorgan Chase Bank’s Singapore branch.

Michael earned his J.D. in 1997 from Stanford Law School, where he was a member of the Stanford Law Review. He received a B.A. in 1992 from the University of California, Berkeley.

Ashley Crawford, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld

Ashley Vinson Crawford is a commercial litigation partner in the San Francisco office of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP. Her practice principally consists of representing financial services companies, including insurance carriers, consumer lenders and their service providers, in class action litigation, arbitration proceedings and other disputes. Ms. Crawford has handled a wide array of commercial litigation matters, including consumer class actions and mass plaintiff litigation, securities class actions and related shareholder derivative actions, complex contract and fraud disputes, and bad faith and coverage litigation.

 Prior to rejoining Akin Gump in 2011, Ms. Crawford served as in-house counsel for an insurance company where she managed bad faith and corporate litigation and advised claims personnel for various lines of business. She uses the unique perspective she gained as an in-house lawyer to deliver high-quality and cost-effective services for her litigation clients.

 Ms. Crawford received her J.D. from Harvard Law School in 2003. She received her B.A, summa cum laude, in economics from Louisiana State University in 1999. In 2015, Ms. Crawford was named among the top young insurance lawyers by Law360 in its annual “Rising Stars” list.

Carrie Flynn, Symantec

Carrie Flynn is a Senior Director in Symantec’s Legal Department and is responsible for leading the Litigation and Ethics & Compliance teams. She joined Symantec’s Litigation team in 2008 and since then, has managed many of the company’s highest risk litigation and government investigation matters. She took over responsibility for Ethics & Compliance in January 2017.

Prior to joining Symantec, she practiced product liability and complex commercial litigation at the law firm of Nixon Peabody (formerly Lillick & Charles) in San Francisco.  Carrie is a graduate of Pomona College and Stanford Law School.

Angela Johnson, Uber

Angela Johnson is Litigation Counsel at Uber in San Francisco. Mrs. Johnson previously served as Litigation Counsel at Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Hewlett Packard Company from 2012-2017. She has litigated and managed cases in state and federal courts throughout the United States.

In addition to managing all aspects of her litigation caseload, Mrs. Johnson has extensive experience counseling business leaders on a variety of legal issues and providing recommendations to corporate policy teams. Her broad experiences with commercial, IP, employment and class action litigation enables her to provide practical, creative solutions that mitigate legal risks while meeting business objectives.

When she is not focused on litigation, she is passionate about finding ways to help and empower communities of color and under-resourced groups. As the OneJustice Advisory Board Chair, she helps the organization with its development of strategic initiatives focused on providing pro bono legal services to underprivileged communities throughout the state of California.

She also spearheaded Coalition of Black Excellence Week (CBEWeek), an initiative that brought together black employee resource groups and diversity and inclusion committees at over 40 companies for one week of collaborative programming for black history month. The collaboration focused on uplifting the community and honoring individuals and nonprofits who are having positive impact on communities of color. The inaugural CBEWeek had 14 events open to the community and raised over 30,000 for nonprofits.

Mrs. Johnson received her J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School, her M.P.P from the University of Virginia Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, and her B.A. from the University of Virginia.

Brian Kwok, Haynes and Boone
Brian C. Kwok is a partner at Haynes and Boone, LLP, specializing in the areas of patent litigation and licensing. Mr. Kwok helps clients build, manage, and successfully monetize patent portfolios. He also counsels clients through pre-litigation conflicts to resolve assertions and licensing disputes before patent litigation ensues. When patent disputes mature into formal litigations, Mr. Kwok has significant experience patent matters before the International Trade Commission and numerous federal district courts. Mr. Kwok was selected for inclusion in Northern California Super Lawyers – Rising Stars Edition, Thomson Reuters, 2014-2016.

An experienced engineer, Mr. Kwok’s technical experience includes a wide range of high-tech subject matters.  Outside of his legal practice, Mr. Kwok is a member of the Board of Directors for Leela International, a non-profit that builds playgrounds and art education programs for children in underprivileged communities around the world.

Mr. Kwok received his B.S. with distinction in chemical engineering from the University of Illinois, and graduated from the University of Wisconsin Law School, magna cum laude.

Lisa Nguyen, Latham & Watkins
Lisa Nguyen is a partner in the Silicon Valley office of Latham & Watkins. Her practice focuses primarily on intellectual property litigation, and has included actions pending before the US International Trade Commission, federal district courts and state courts. She has represented both plaintiffs and defendants in complex multi-defendant, multi-patent cases. She has particular experience obtaining successful outcomes for her clients based on innovative strategies, including victories at trial, summary judgment, and motions to dismiss. She has obtained walk aways for defendants with no payment to plaintiffs, as well as attorneys’ fees and costs awards.

Lisa is also a local leader of Women Enriching Business (WEB), a Latham committee dedicated to promoting women in business both outside and inside the firm through global and local efforts to create broader networks and productive business relationships, to attract top talent and to support the long-term success of women.

Lisa has been recognized as a Rising Star in intellectual property litigation by Northern California Super Lawyers each year since 2013. As an undergraduate, Lisa regularly served as a teaching assistant for the introductory computer science course and was recognized with the Computer Science Department Award for Excellence and Dedication in Teaching. She received her bachelor’s degree in computer science and legal studies from U.C. Berkeley and her law degree from the University of Chicago Law School.

Elica Vafaie, Asian American Advancing Justice – Asian Law Caucus

Elica Vafaie is a Staff Attorney & Program Manager in the National Security & Civil Rights Program at Advancing Justice- Asian Law Caucus. Prior to joining Asian Law Caucus, Elica worked as the supervising attorney to establish the University of California Undocumented Legal Services Center providing free immigration legal services to U.C. students and their families across California. She was the Project Director of the One Nation Initiative at the California Community Foundation in Los Angeles where she managed the first philanthropic program in Southern California to support Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim, and South Asian communities. Elica received her B.A. from U.C. Irvine and Sciences Po, Paris. She received her J.D. from U.C. Davis School of Law, where she was active in the Immigration Law Clinic and a U.C. Human Rights Fellow. Elica is a 2015-2016 German Marshall Memorial Fellow and the current Northern California Chapter President of the Iranian American Bar Association.

Claudia Vetesi, Morrison & Foerster

Claudia Vetesi is a partner in Morrison Foerster’s San Francisco office. Claudia focuses her practice on the defense of consumer class actions, and on complex commercial litigation, including unfair competition, false advertising, privacy issues, contract and licensing disputes, financial services litigation, and trade secrets misappropriation. She regularly counsels clients in the food, retail, financial, and technology industries. She also represents companies in false advertising disputes before the National Advertising Division (NAD) of the Council of Better Business Bureaus, Inc.

Claudia is also an editor and frequent contributor to the firm’s Class Dismissed blog (classdismissed.mofo.com), which provides insights, recommendations, and timely reports on the latest defense news, developments, and trends in the most current class action lawsuits and product liability issues that affect consumer-facing companies. She has published articles on class action and false advertising issues, and is a co-author of Chapter 7, Unfair Competition, in California Business Litigation 2016, The Recorder.

Claudia received her J.D. degree in 2004 from Berkeley Law (Boalt Hall School of Law), where she was an associate editor of the Berkeley Technology Law Journal. During law school, Claudia externed for the Honorable John T. Noonan, United States Court of Appeals Judge for the Ninth Circuit, and for Magistrate Judge Joseph C. Spero of the Northern District of California.

Daniel Zimmermann, WilmerHale

Daniel Zimmermann is a partner at WilmerHale. An accomplished lawyer with 20 years of extensive experience in complex corporate transactions and venture technology issues. For nearly 20 years, he has advised emerging companies and technology startups, and draws on his global experiences counseling companies in the United States and Europe. Mr. Zimmermann provides sophisticated counsel on a variety of corporate governance and finance matters, as well as exit transactions such as public offerings and mergers and acquisitions. He further counsels Silicon Valley-based venture capital firms, as well as global venture and private equity funds in their portfolio investments in the US and abroad.

Mr. Zimmermann is a co-chair of WilmerHale’s Diversity Committee. He has also served as Chair of the Executive Committee of the International Law Section of the State Bar of California for the 2009-2010 term and as Chairman of the Board of the German American Business Association. Mr. Zimmermann also previously served as president and board member of Alto International School in Menlo Park and serves as primary pro bono counsel to the School.

Mr. Zimmermann was recognized as “Up and Coming” in the 2011 and 2012 editions of Chambers USA for his corporate/M&A: venture capital practice, and was named in the 2014-2017 editions of Northern California Super Lawyers for his business/corporate practice. Mr. Zimmermann is a graduate of Albert-Ludwigs-Universität, Freiburg im Breisgau, and obtained his L.L.M. from University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law.

DIVERSITY KEYNOTE SPEAKER

Michelle VonderHaar, General Counsel for Veritas Technologies

Michelle VonderHaar is the Senior Vice President and General Counsel for Veritas Technologies. In this role, Michelle leads the Global Legal Affairs team, which includes the Legal department, Ethics & Compliance, Trade Compliance, Government Affairs, and Corporate Social Responsibility/Diversity & Inclusion. Prior to being named SVP and GC, she served as Vice President, Legal and was lead for the EMEA and Asia-Pacific-Japan regions, Corporate/M&A, Ethics & Compliance and Government Affairs.

Prior to Veritas, Michelle worked in the Legal department of Symantec Corporation, where she had roles in a number of areas including Corporate, M&A and Head of Global Trade Compliance. In 2009 she transferred to the Huawei-Symantec joint venture in Hong Kong in 2009 to become its General Counsel, and returned to Symantec in 2012 as the VP, Legal (APJ Region) in Singapore.

Before moving in-house, Michelle was a commercial litigator with Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP in Los Angeles and Irvine, and a corporate finance and M&A attorney with O’Melveny & Myers LLP, practicing with O’Melveny in London, San Francisco and Silicon Valley.

Ms. VonderHaar is admitted to practice law in California, Washington D.C., New York and England & Wales, and she received her Bachelor’s and Juris Doctorate degrees from the University of Arizona, James E. Rogers College of Law where she was a member of, and published in, the Arizona Law Review.

Register