Gender on Trial: How Tech is Driving Diversity in Law

Overview

Date: Wednesday, June 27, 2018 Time: 2 p.m. EST / 11 a.m. PST Cost: Complimentary

Produced and Sponsored by:

Improving diversity in the legal industry is important to securing business from clients, and the right thing to do. Despite recent progress, engrained gender stereotypes and unconscious bias are difficult to shed.

How can firms overcome these obstacles as they are asked to provide more holistic measures of gender diversity beyond just head-count?

Join Phyllis Turner-Brim, Holly English, Michael Sander and Susan Tull as they discuss how new approaches to diversity evaluation and emerging technologies can help track a firm’s performance to achieve better gender diversity in litigation. Learn to identify barriers that prevent firms from achieving gender goals, and understand client expectations when they request diversity statistics.

Join this webcast for an understanding of:

• Shortcomings of how firms traditionally tracked gender diversity
• Identify assumptions, often driven by unconscious bias, that lowed the numbers of women in the profession and in leadership roles
• Emerging automation and A.I. technologies that holistically measure diversity
• Best practices for identifying a firm’s diversity commitment and benchmarking against others

Register Now!

Speaker Names & Bios 

Phyllis Turner-Brim

Vice President and Assistant General Counsel, Starbucks

Phyllis T. Turner-Brim is vice president, assistant general counsel IP and Technology at Starbucks Coffee Company headquartered in Seattle, WA.  As the head of Starbucks Intellectual Property and Technology legal team, Phyllis leads the legal support for the worldwide protection, enforcement and deployment of Starbucks intellectual property portfolio (including trademarks, patents and copyrights), for commercial transactions in the areas of information technology and digital ventures, and for global data protection and privacy.   She is a member of the Starbucks Law & Corporate Affairs leadership team, as well as a strategic business partner and legal advisor to executives leading Starbucks Global Strategy and Starbucks Technology teams.

Immediately prior to joining Starbucks, Phyllis was Vice President, Chief IP Counsel at Intellectual Ventures Management LLC (“IV”) in Bellevue, WA where she led a large team responsible for legal services supporting patent acquisitions and divestitures, licensing, prosecution, and related transactions.  Prior to joining IV, Phyllis held in-house legal and business management positions at Intermec Technologies Corporation, Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Cabot Microelectronic Corporation and Amoco Corp.   She began her legal career as an associate at McAndrews, Held and Mallow, Ltd. in Chicago, IL.

Phyllis is a graduate of the University of Cincinnati Law School, and an honors graduate of the Illinois Institute of Technology (B.S. Chemical Engineering).  She has served as a lecturer/presenter on several topics including, developing business focused licensing programs, diversity in the law, recruitment and retention of minorities and women in technical professions, chemical patent drafting, IP strategy development, career development and personal risk taking.  Phyllis has been named as one of IAM’s IP Strategy 300:  The World’s Leading IP Strategist for 2015, 2016 and 2017.

Phyllis is a professional career coach, focusing on women of color seeking to reach executive leadership roles in the private sector.

Phyllis is a member of the Trustee Boards of the American Intellectual Property Law Education Foundation, the Intellectual Property Owners Education Foundation, the Snohomish County (WA) YMCA, Bloodworks  (f.k.a. Puget Sound Blood Center) and Cornish College of the Arts.

Prior to pursuing a career in the law, Phyllis held technical management and product development  positions with General Electric Co. and Procter and Gamble Co.

HOLLY ENGLISH, ESQ.

Partner, Nukk-Freeman Cerra, P.C.

Holly English, a past President of the National Association of Women Lawyers, is a seasoned practitioner who counsels management on issues such as hiring, wage and hour, leaves of absence, severance and employment contracts, disability and accommodation, restrictive covenants, termination, and employee handbooks and policies, and provides training on issues such as harassment and unconscious bias. She represents management in disputes with federal and state administrative agencies relating to discrimination and wage-and-hour issues, and defends companies in discrimination lawsuits in federal and state courts.

She is the author of Gender on Trial: Sexual Stereotypes and Work/Life Balance in the Legal Workplace, published in 2003 by Law Journal Press, a division of American Lawyer Media, to be re-issued in 2019. Previously, as a consultant, Ms. English worked in the U.S. and internationally with corporations, government units and not-for-profit organizations, helping to align core values for maximum performance.

Michael Sander

Managing Director, Docket Alarm

Michael began his career as a software engineer in California before going to law school, becoming a litigator at a top tier intellectual property law firm in New York City. Michael’s practice focused on a variety of IP counseling, including patent litigation spanning federal district courts, the International Trade Commission, and the Patent Trial and Appeal Board.

While working as a full-time associate, Michael spent his nights and weekends building litigation analysis tools for litigators, which would eventually lead to his founding of Docket Alarm, a litigation analytics and research company. In August 2015, Michael left the practice of law to develop Docket Alarm full time. Over the next two years, numerous AMLaw100 and Fortune 500 companies have come to rely on Docket Alarm’s analytics and research tools. His platform has won numerous accolades, including ALM’s Innovation award, being featured on a television special on artificial intelligence and the law, as well as being named a Legal AI Leader of 2018 in the National Law Journal.

On January 2018, Docket Alarm was acquired by Fastcase, a leading provider of primary law materials and legal research tools. Michael will continue as a Managing Director of Docket Alarm and Director of Fastcase Analytics to further expand the platform’s features and reach.

Susan Tull

Partner, Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner LLP

Susan Tull is a partner in Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner, LLP’s Washington, DC office. Susan focuses her practice on patent litigation and client counseling in the mechanical, industrial, electrical, and medical device fields. She represents clients before U.S. district courts, the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC), and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Susan has actively participated in several trials, where she has examined and cross-examined fact and expert witnesses, and has managed attorney and support teams throughout every phase of patent litigation. She has extensive experience developing litigation strategies, taking complex discovery, working with technical and damages experts, and drafting summary judgment motions, pre-and post-trial briefs, as well as appellate briefs.  Susan is actively involved in promoting diversity at Finnegan and within IP law. She has served as a chair of the Finnegan’s Women’s Forum and speaks at diversity-related events.