Finding Mentors
Not quite sure how to make the most of your Yale Law School experience? Balancing various academic interests and discerning between different professional paths? Wondering if a clerkship is for you or how to choose between clerkships? Curious about BigLaw or moving in-house? Interested in working in both the private and public sectors? Come speak to our Center Fellows, who have faced these challenges themselves, and who have guided many others through their long and distinguished careers in practice.
Vicki graduated from Yale Law School with a general sense that she wanted to be a litigator but no plans to specialize in IP. After first being part of a trial team on a major securities case, she sought out more courtroom experience. Vicki discovered IP litigation, which often requires full-blown evidentiary hearings in advance of trial and critical substantive oral arguments long before any appeal. Even more rewarding, the field provides the opportunity to work closely with highly creative people in a variety of fields who are developing innovations that can better our world and who need equally creative thinking about how to share and fund their work. Law pertaining to creative fields needs to be equally creative. IP law is constantly developing refinements, balancing interests and making course corrections, exploring issues that will be familiar to Yale law students. The field is not just for those with a technical background (Vicki was a philosophy and history major in college): students and lawyers who are grounded in economics, marketing, finance, business, history, philosophy, and ethics, among other disciplines, and who are interested in innovation and engaging with new problems will enjoy the field.
Vicki was an IP partner at Paul Hastings LLP in New York for more than 30 years, leading its trade secrets litigation practice. She has worked with clients ranging from startups to global businesses. She is Chair Emerita of the nonprofit, non-partisan Sedona Conference Working Group 12 on Trade Secrets Law, which works with judges, lawyers and academics to develop Commentaries to move the law forward. Vicki looks forward to meeting with you individually for mentorship conversations.
Topics include: making the most of YLS; choosing a clerkship; pursuing a career in IP law; distinguishing between the four main areas of IP law (patents; copyrights; trademarks; and trade secrets); identifying and creating career opportunities in private practice; building collaborative partnerships between the judiciary, academia, and practice to explore policy questions and to advocate for solutions.
While a student at Yale Law School, Michael had the far-from-unique plan to become either a constitutional or international lawyer, even if he had only the vaguest idea what that entailed. After a decade in at Arnold & Porter working on litigation and regulatory matters, Michael spent the next 25 years as the chief legal officer of four large organizations, including a federal government agency, two large financial firms and a Big 4 global professional services organization (where he did eventually become the "international lawyer" he had aspired to be). In these roles, he built, transformed and oversaw teams of hundreds of lawyers and legal and compliance professionals globally and personally supervised the successful defense of some of the most high-profile and challenging litigation and regulatory matters of recent decades, major transactions like the (uncompleted) separation of EY (Ernst & Young) into public and private companies and key technology initiatives. During a visit to the Law School in 2008, Michael was asked by then Dean Harold Koh to teach his first law school class. Over the next 18 years, he would go on to teach four classes of his own creation at Yale, Columbia and Harvard Law Schools, sometimes partnering with eminent YLS graduates. Through his teaching and as a supervisor at his employers, he helped educate and mentor a generation of lawyers. Michael is happy to discuss with students careers in-house in the private and public sectors, as well as in private practice. He can also discuss how those careers can be accompanied by part-time work in academia. Having worked on matters and supervised teams in dozens of countries, he can advise on overseas practice undertaken both from the U.S. and in foreign countries.
Topics include: in-house careers in the public and private sectors; building a law firm practice; cross-border legal practice (based in either the U.S. or a foreign jurisdiction); and combining legal practice with part-time work in academia.
David arrived at Yale Law School with no expectation of becoming a practicing lawyer. He then spent the next 42 years after graduation in practice – first in public service (as a law clerk, an assistant U.S. attorney for SDNY, and an associate independent counsel in the Iran-Contra investigation) and then in private practice (as the founder of the White Collar practice at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP and as Global Head of Litigation/Controversy from 2009-2020).
Mentors played a key role in helping David shape his career. He now looks forward to mentoring others.
Topics include: making the most of YLS; choosing a clerkship; pursuing a career in White Collar or in Litigation more generally; moving between public service and private practice; identifying and creating career opportunities at BigLaw; and carving out personal space while excelling at practice.