Perkins Coie Announces 2020 Partner Class

• Michael Avent
• Joe Bailey
• Elizabeth Manno Banzhoff
• Adam Brenner
• Jim Brenner
• Caitlin Carey
• Michael Carr
• Garrett Colli
• Andrew Dufresne
• David Fentin
• Amir Gamliel
• Amelia Gerlicher
• Martin Gilmore
• John Gray

• Emily Greb
• Heather Heindel
• Samuel Jo
• Kira Loehr
• Louise Lu
• Tony McCormick
• Nicola Menaldo
• Laurie Rasmussen
• Elena Romerdahl
• Thomas Ryerson
• Gilbert Villaflor
• Yingli Wang

Michael Avent (Seattle) is a member of Perkins Coie's Emerging Companies & Venture Capital practice. He represents emerging growth technology and life sciences companies in all aspects of corporate matters, including formation, equity and debt financings, mergers and acquisitions, and corporate governance. In addition, he works with a number of venture capital and private equity investment funds and publicly traded corporate strategic investors in connection with their portfolio investments.

Joe Bailey (Portland) is a member of the Corporate & Securities practice. His practice focuses on corporate finance and mergers and acquisitions for companies at all stages of the growth cycle, ranging from startups to large public companies. His mergers and acquisitions practice includes structuring and executing acquisitions, dispositions, divestitures, and recapitalizations. In addition to his work with public and private companies, Joe also represents investors in debt and equity financings.

Elizabeth Manno Banzhoff (Denver) is a member of the Patent Litigation practice. Elizabeth focuses her practice on patent infringement and other intellectual property litigation, including trademark litigation. Her experience includes litigating patent and trademark infringement cases before federal courts across the country and in the Federal Circuit. Elizabeth represents clients in a variety of technology fields, including semiconductors, GPS, databases, and medical devices. Elizabeth is a member of the National Association of Women Lawyers, which honored her with the Virginia S. Mueller Outstanding Member Award in 2019. Elizabeth also serves on the Board of Cupid's Charity, a nonprofit benefiting the Children's Tumor Foundation.

Adam Brenner (New York) is a member of the Emerging Companies & Venture Capital practice. Adam concentrates his practice on the representation of both venture capital and private equity funds and innovative companies throughout their lifecycle, from early-stage investments to growth equity and mergers and acquisitions. He has a particular focus on innovative companies outside of the United States and those operating in highly regulated sectors. Adam is also a co-founder of Accelerate Yale, a global community of alumni and friends of Yale who are engaged in innovation, tech, and entrepreneurship. Adam received his J.D. and M.Ed from Boston College and B.A. from Yale University.

Jim Brenner (Palo Alto) is a member of the Emerging Companies & Venture Capital practice. Jim works with startups and counsels consumer-facing companies, including those active in the augmented and virtual reality space and the Internet of Things (IoT). Jim works with founders and entrepreneurs through the entire lifecycle of their companies, including formation, fundraising, and exit processes. He also serves as an outside general counsel for several clients and has acted as investor counsel in venture capital financings.

Caitlin Carey (San Francisco) is a member of the Trust & Estate Planning practice. Caitlin advises clients in the areas of estate planning, tax planning, premarital planning, trust administration, and probate court matters. She regularly represents clients in the negotiation and preparation of prenuptial and postnuptial agreements, and she counsels clients on the best practices for preservation of separate property rights and interests both before and during marriage.

Michael Carr (Boise) is a member of the Mergers & Acquisitions practice. Michael represents private equity funds, venture capital funds, and emerging companies in a variety of corporate matters, including mergers and acquisitions, financings, growth transactions, and general corporate governance. He also provides representation to the portfolio companies of his private equity clients in connection with strategic add-on acquisitions and operational execution.

Garrett Colli (San Francisco) is a member of the Real Estate & Land Use practice. Garrett's practice focuses on coordinating land use entitlements and environmental compliance for residential, commercial, industrial, and renewable energy projects. He also negotiates purchase and sale agreements, leases, easements, and related transactions in support of development projects.

Andrew Dufresne (Madison) is a member of the Patent Litigation and Appellate Law practices. Andrew helps clients protect and advance their interests in patent litigation at the trial and appellate levels, and he has represented a range of clients, including Fortune 100 and 500 companies, smaller and emerging companies, and numerous universities. He has represented clients in various fields in a range of technology areas, including pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, electronics, and computer software, and he has considerable experience litigating before the Federal Circuit, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board and district courts.

David Fentin (Seattle) is a member of the Technology Transactions & Privacy Law practice. David concentrates his practice on technology product launches, compliance counseling and commercial agreements with a focus on privacy and data security, intellectual property development and licensing, online contract formation, marketing and advertising laws, electronic signatures, internet intermediary liability, and consumer protection. He counsels clients offering or utilizing a variety of technologies, including self-driving cars, drones, smart home devices and other IoT hardware, fintech solutions, enterprise services (including ad tech and analytics tools), blockchain deployments, e-commerce sites, marketplaces, mobile apps, and social media platforms.

Amir Gamliel (Los Angeles) is a member of the Bankruptcy & Restructuring practice. Amir counsels financially troubled entities; parties that have loaned to, invested in or managed these entities; and parties aiming to acquire such entities or their distressed assets. Amir's bankruptcy practice consists of representing debtors, secured and unsecured creditors, and creditors' committees. Amir also represents parties in complex litigation involving financial transactions, contract disputes, business tort claims, real estate, receiverships, and other commercial transactions.

Amelia Gerlicher (Seattle) is a member of the Privacy & Security practice. Amelia's practice focuses primarily on helping clients prepare for and react to data breaches and network intrusions, as well as helping clients assess and address the privacy and data security risks that arise from a wide range of commercial activities. She has advised clients ranging from small startups to Fortune 100 companies on the protection and use of personal data, including disclosure obligations, security requirements, and data breach notification and response. She also manages internet enforcement programs for platform clients, addressing spam, scraping, and other online misbehavior.

Martin Gilmore (New York) is a member of the Patent Litigation practice. Martin is an experienced litigator focusing on intellectual property matters and complex commercial disputes. He represents clients in patent, trademark and trade dress, trade secret, and unfair competition matters, as well as in commercial litigation throughout the nation. Martin has advised clients in an array of technical fields, including in semiconductor design, server technology, streaming video, smart phones, medical devices, pharmaceuticals, wireless communications and networking, and voice recognition systems.

John Gray (Phoenix) is a member of the Trademark, Copyright, Internet & Advertising practice. John focuses on complex business and intellectual property disputes and advises well-known technology clients across the country. He has a special emphasis in trade secret litigation and counseling, serving as counsel for both plaintiffs and defendants in multiple high-risk and prominent trade secret litigations, as well as regularly advising clients on managing trade secret risk. John also has significant experience representing both large and small companies in disputes over trademark enforcement, patent infringement, licensing, copyright infringement, employment and noncompetition agreements, and an array of contract and business tort issues.

Emily Greb (Madison) is a member of the Patent Litigation practice. Emily focuses her practice on patent infringement litigation and post-grant review proceedings in front of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board. Her practice concentrates on life science technologies and includes significant experience in Hatch-Waxman litigation. Emily is experienced at all stages of litigation, including developing case strategies prior to the filing of a complaint and continuing through trial and appellate proceedings. She has represented clients in federal courts across the country as trial counsel and is experienced in presenting witnesses and preparing them for court appearances.

Heather Heindel (Seattle) is a member of the Construction and Real Estate Litigation practice. Heather counsels clients on the successful completion of construction projects from conception through closeout, including developing and negotiating complex contracts, advising on legal issues during construction and resolving construction disputes. Heather also successfully represents clients in mediation, arbitration, and litigation, as well as before dispute review boards, including developing electronic discovery strategies and managing multimillion-document electronic discovery efforts.

Samuel Jo (Seattle and Dallas) is a member of the Technology Transactions & Privacy Law practice. Sam focuses his practice on complex commercial and IP licensing agreements as well as technology platform/infrastructure and hardware development, integration, launch and product counseling, with a particular emphasis on emerging areas such as machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) model architectures, enterprise blockchain, and distributed ledger solutions, and Internet of Things (IoT) platforms, such as connected cars and smart cities. He has extensive experience representing startups and emerging growth entities, high-profile technology enterprises, Fortune 500 companies, and customers and providers in a wide variety of industry sectors.

Kira Loehr (Madison) is a member of the Environment & Natural Resources practice. Kira represents generation, transmission and distribution utilities as well as consumers before state and federal regulatory agencies and courts. She also conducts general civil litigation in state and federal district and appellate courts. Her public utility administrative law experience includes electric and water rate case proceedings, territorial disputes between utilities, energy policy investigations, rulemakings, utility mergers, purchase and sale of utility facilities, innovative rate designs, and construction dockets.

Louise Lu (San Diego) is a member of the Patent Litigation practice. Louise has a broad intellectual property practice with a focus on patent litigation and has litigated numerous patent infringement cases in Section 337 investigations before the U.S. International Trade Commission and federal district courts. Louise also has substantial experience in coordinating patent invalidity proceedings internationally, patent prosecution in front of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and post-grant proceedings before the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board.

Tony McCormick (Seattle) is a member of the Trust & Estate Planning practice. Tony counsels his clients in both the tax and non-tax aspects of estate planning, with a specific focus on estate planning strategies to efficiently minimize taxes through the creation of wills, trusts, business entities, and charitable organizations, and the use of gifts, sales, and other wealth-transfer strategies. Tony's practice also includes advising individuals and tax-exempt organizations on the wide range of legal issues affecting charitable giving and on the formation and ongoing maintenance of nonprofit organizations.

Nicola Menaldo (Seattle) is a member of the Privacy & Security practice. Nicola defends and provides counsel to technology and retail clients on a wide range of issues central to their business needs, including privacy and data security, marketing, biometrics, scraping and web crawling, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. Nicola both defends clients in class action litigation and provides product counseling and compliance advice to help avoid litigation outcomes. She provides compliance counsel on a range of statutes and regulations, including the California Consumer Privacy Act, the CAN-SPAM Act, the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, and state biometrics laws and regulations.

Laurie Rasmussen (Denver) is a member of the Patent Prosecution & Portfolio Counseling practice. Laurie helps clients procure, manage, assess, and improve their intellectual property assets. She is experienced in a variety of technical areas, managing large portfolios and providing effective advice that delivers a return on investment in a company's patent portfolio. Laurie also works one-on-one with inventors and in-house counsel to describe inventions and devise a forward-looking approach for cost-effective patent prosecution.

Elena Romerdahl (Anchorage) is a member of the Environment & Natural Resources practice. Elena's practice focuses on oil, gas and mining issues; project development and finance; state and federal permitting; litigation; enforcement actions and administrative appeals concerning environmental and natural resource issues; utility rate and tariff matters; environmental compliance counseling; contaminated site investigations; due diligence and title review for natural resource deals; commercial agreements for resource projects; and occupational safety and health issues.

Thomas Ryerson (Phoenix) is a member of the White Collar & Investigations practice. Thomas represents individual and corporate defendants in connection with government investigations and criminal prosecutions in federal and state courts, as well as administrative enforcement actions. He advises and represents clients in nearly all stages of prosecution, from the initial investigation through sentencing. Thomas also conducts internal investigations in anticipation of potential government scrutiny, often advising clients how to improve their compliance function as a result. Thomas is also an experienced litigator and represents clients in high-stakes litigation, including complex commercial and constitutional cases.

Gilbert Villaflor (Chicago) is a member of the Technology Transactions & Privacy Law practice. Gilbert is a commercial deal lawyer who counsels clients at the intersection of technology, business, law, and privacy. He has extensive experience representing established and emerging companies in a broad range of technology and data-driven sectors, including software, cloud computing, gaming, entertainment, semiconductor, artificial intelligence, robotics, and life sciences. Gilbert regularly advises clients on structuring and negotiating complex commercial arrangements, strategic relationships, and intellectual property matters. His practice also includes counseling companies on the intellectual property aspects of mergers and acquisitions, private equity investments, and asset sales.