MoForever Alumni News - Winter 2019

9 | MoForever Winter 2019 time seconded to a client earlier in my career and loved it. Bob McKague—a former MoFo colleague—had just returned to Jazz as the chief compliance officer, and he put out the word that Jazz was looking for someone to manage litigation. At the time, I had not worked on many pharma matters, but I was pretty confident that I could figure it out. And so many things about the opportunity just felt right. On a personal level, I had been thinking a lot about the health care field, because my father is a physician, and so the chance to work for a company focused on medicine and patients was exciting to me. And I wouldn’t have to move—the company was right up the street from MoFo in Palo Alto! Once I met the people here I was really sold. I feel so lucky to have this job—I am challenged but never bored. How did you begin your career? I came to MoFo Palo Alto right from law school (Berkeley) in 1991. The Palo Alto office was relatively new and scrappy at the time—it felt much more relaxed and much less hierarchical than the San Francisco office. We started Casual Friday—this is really going back, right? Suits every other day of the week, but on Friday, Palo Alto wore khakis—and sometimes even jeans. We also got a lot of smaller litigation matters—so it was a great place to start as a litigator and get good experience early on. And many of us not only started out together but have stayed friends over the years—Ken Kuwayti pulls a bunch of us together the first Friday of the month for lunch at what used to be China Lion. Apart from a couple of breaks— maternity leaves and a leave of absence to go in-house for a client called Cylink—I ended up staying for 20 years, first as an associate, and then later in an of counsel role, before I came to Jazz. “[T]HE CHANCE TO WORK FOR A COMPANY FOCUSED ON MEDICINE AND PATIENTS WAS EXCITING TO ME.”