PracticePro

Thursday, June 7, 2018
Polsinelli
150 N Riverside Plaza Suite 3000, Chicago, IL 60606

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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
Register for the Conference here.  Click here for scholarship info.

SOLD OUT

Summer Soirée
Admission is complimentary for all conference attendees.

SPEAKERS & INSTRUCTORS

Niki Khoshzamir, PracticePro 

Niki Khoshzamir is the Founder and CEO of PracticePro and leads all business and legal aspects of the organization including product development and strategic partnerships. Niki speaks at law schools and law firms nationwide on a variety of skills topics, including professional branding, habits of highly effective associates, networking, advanced interviewing techniques, and diversity as a business asset. She also consults with law firms and corporate legal departments to strengthen talent development and diversity programs, including helping diverse and first-generation associates to succeed as attorneys. She is a regular contributor to Above the Law, American Bar Association, and PracticePro Journal.

Niki is also a lecturer at University of California, Berkeley, School of Law (Berkeley Law), where she teaches The Junior Litigation Associate, a course she designed for Berkeley Law in 2011. She also regularly guest lectures Advanced Legal Writing and Advanced Legal Research courses.

Prior to founding PracticePro, Niki practiced law at the international law firms of Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr, LLP and Kirkland & Ellis, LLP. She focused her practice on intellectual property litigation, high stakes commercial disputes, and trade sanctions compliance. She successfully represented clients throughout the United States during all phases of litigation, including trial. She also practiced before the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control on U.S. trade sanctions compliance and licensing matters.

Niki has been recognized as one of the top “40 under 40” professionals by Silicon Valley Business Journal. She is also the recipient of Minority Bar Coalition’s Unity Award and Iranian American Bar Association’s Distinguished Service Award. Niki currently serves on the national advisory board of the Iranian American Bar Association (IABA), and is the former president of the Northern California Chapter, which she founded in 2006 and grew to one of the largest and most active chapters of the organization.

Niki obtained her B.S. in Biology, summa cum laude, from Texas Southern University, and her J.D. and certificate in Law and Technology from Berkeley Law. Prior to her legal career, she was a research assistant at the MD Anderson Cancer Center and the Baylor College of Medicine Human Genome Sequencing Center. Niki grew up in Tehran, London, and Vienna, immigrated to the United States on her own at 19 to attend college, and currently calls the Bay Area home.

Dannia Altemimei, Balyasny Asset Management

Dannia Altemimei is the Associate General Counsel at Balyasny Asset Management L.P., an investment management firm with global offices. She advises on a number of legal issues relating to all aspects of the investment management and hedge fund business, with a focus on trading/financing documentation and private equity investments. Dannia also handles a range of employment matters for the firm, as well as a wide variety of general corporate and transactional matters. In her role, Dannia also manages day-to-day relationships with a number of external law firms.

Prior to joining Balyasny, Dannia was an associate at Levenfeld Pearlstein, in the firm’s Corporate and Securities group, where she advised clients broadly on corporate matters, with a focus on mergers and acquisitions. Dannia began practicing law at the Chicago offices of Sidley Austin LLP in the Investment, Funds, Advisers and Derivatives Group, serving investment management clients.

Dannia received a B.A. in Political Science, magna cum laude, from Loyola University Chicago. She received her J.D., summa cum laude, from the University of Illinois College of Law, Urbana-Champaign.

Reena Jashnani-Slusarz, Elementum Advisors

Reena Jashnani-Slusarz is the Deputy General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer at Elementum Advisors.  She has advised on legal issues relating to alternative investments and investment advisory services since 2006.

Prior to joining Elementum, Reena was a Senior Vice President, Deputy General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer for Mesirow Advanced Strategies, Inc. where she, along with the general counsel, was responsible for all legal affairs including providing legal advice with respect to all aspects of its business, directing relationships with external counsel, and assisting in maintaining its operations in compliance with relevant legal and regulatory requirements.

Prior to joining Mesirow, Reena was an associate at Sidley Austin LLP where she serviced a variety of direct trading and fund-of-funds managers with respect to legal, regulatory, and compliance matters. Reena earned a B.A. in Psychology from the University of Michigan and a Juris Doctorate from the University of Illinois.

Pamela Kain, Cushman & Wakefield

Pamela Kain currently serves as the North America General Counsel for Cushman & Wakefield, a global leader in commercial real estate services. Ms. Kain oversees a team of attorneys and professionals responsible for all aspects of Cushman & Wakefield’s legal affairs in North America. Ms. Kain is also responsible for providing legal support for the firm’s strategic initiatives and to the Chief Executive Officer and senior leadership team.

Prior to joining Cushman & Wakefield, Ms. Kain served in a variety of roles at General Electric. Ms. Kain was named the Global Executive Commercial Counsel in GE’s Commercial Legal Function in 2017, where she was tapped by senior leadership to drive transformation within the legal department and drive GE’s horizontal initiatives, concentrating on enabling business goals. In 2015, Ms. Kain was asked to serve as an Executive Counsel with the GE Capital Mergers & Acquisitions team, where she focused on strategic dispositions and reorganizations for GE Capital and the General Electric Company, following GE’s divesture of GE Capital Real Estate. Ms. Kain originally joined GE in 2011 as Senior Counsel for GE Capital Real Estate, concentrating her practice on commercial real estate transactions, including senior and mezzanine financings, acquisitions, dispositions, asset management, restructuring, workouts, development and redevelopment matters, leasing, bankruptcy matters, and litigation. In her role at GECRE, Ms. Kain also served as the Legal Operations leader, responsible for operations and communications initiatives, project management and team leadership as well as engagement and direction of outside counsel.

Prior to joining GE, Ms. Kain served as the Vice President and Deputy General Counsel for General Growth Properties. Together with her team of attorneys and professionals at GGP, she handled property-level financings, corporate credit facilities, acquisitions, dispositions, corporate organizational matters, development, redevelopment, leasing and bankruptcy-related matters.

Ms. Kain began practicing law in 2000 in the Chicago office of Katten Muchin Rosenman, where she served as counsel to lenders, developers, purchasers, sellers, joint ventures, landlords and tenants in structuring, negotiating and documenting all aspects of commercial real estate transactions, including acquisition, development, sale-leasebacks, finance, leasing and disposition of office, retail, industrial, multi-family and warehouse assets

Ms. Kain earned her B.S. in Psychology as a Natural Science from the University of Michigan in 1995 and received her J.D. from Northwestern University in 2000, cum laude.

Tamesha Keel, Foley & Lardner LLP

Tamesha Keel is passionate about helping individuals and organizations reach their full potential through her work as a certified diversity and inclusion trainer, coach, and consultant. For over a decade, Tamesha has provided talent acquisition and talent management services to law students and lawyers within the public and private sectors. Specifically, her areas of interest and expertise include: alumni relations, career coaching/counseling, diversity and inclusion, legal recruiting, pro bono, and professional development (including, CLE program development and management).

She has been featured on ABC News, Florida News Network, NPR as well as in the Huffington Post and Miami Herald. Tamesha has published, “Signs, Sources & Strategies for Diverse Attorneys’ Professional Advancement,” which uses a community well-being framework to provide solutions to advancing diverse attorneys. Additionally, Tamesha speaks on a myriad of topics and her past speaking engagements include: NALP’s Annual Education Conference, Equal Justice Works Conference & Career Fair, Microsoft’s Vision to Venture Event, AARP’s Caregiving Rally, and AARP-SEIU conference.

Tamesha has a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and a Juris Doctorate from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. After graduating from law school, she served as a judicial law clerk with immigration courts throughout Florida and Puerto Rico through the U.S. Department of Justice Attorney General’s Honors Program. She was also a judicial law clerk with the U.S. District Court as well as practiced at a real estate law firm. She is licensed to practice in Florida and New York.

Rodney Lewis, Polsinelli

Rodney Lewis is a shareholder at Polsinelli. An experienced and seasoned litigator, Rodney has assisted corporate clients in complex commercial litigation matters across an array of industries in state and federal courts, including consumer class action defense under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, Telephone Consumer Protection Act, Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, various state consumer protection laws, construction litigation, False Claims Act defense, privacy and data security matters, and complex commercial disputes.

Since joining Polsinelli, he has successfully defended several clients in civil trials, defeated motions for class certification, won cases on summary judgment, obtained favorable results for clients through alternative dispute resolution processes, and negotiated favorable settlements for clients where appropriate. Honed by a decade of running his own business in the competitive entertainment industry, Rodney is dedicated to understanding his clients’ business and possesses project management skills necessary in helping him to identify and implement unique strategies for clients.

Rodney earned his B.A. from the University of Illinois, and his J.D., with honors, from DePaul University College of Law.

Annette Moore, (former) City of Chicago – COPA

Annette Moore received her B.A. in English, with a minor in Economics, magna cum laude, from Emory University in 2003, and her J.D. from The University of Chicago Law School in 2006. Annette was appointed in January 2016 to help create the City of Chicago’s new civilian oversight agency, the agency tasked with investigating allegations of misconduct filed against members of the Chicago Police Department. Her tenure with the Civilian Office for Police Accountability (COPA) came at a particularly pivotal time as the City grappled with questions of how to most effectively create a system of police accountability that is both transparent and timely. Under her leadership, COPA launched in September 2017 with a new investigative staff, an increased budget, a revamped IT infrastructure, a brand new training academy and staff focused on providing meaningful policy recommendations to CPD.

Prior to joining COPA, she served as the Associate Director of Admissions for The University of Chicago Law School from September 2013 to January 2016, and as an associate in the Global Finance group of Sidley Austin LLP from 2006 to 2013, where she represented borrowers, lenders and financial intermediaries in connection with syndicated and structured loans and the securitization of a wide variety of assets. While at The University of Chicago Law School, Ms. Moore directed the school’s pipeline and outreach programs which focused on exposing diverse students to the legal field.  During her tenure with Sidley Austin LLP, she was co-chair of the firm’s Associate Diversity Council. Ms. Moore currently serves on the Board of Directors for Great Lakes Academy Charter School, a charter school located in the South Shore neighborhood of Chicago. She also sits on the Board of Directors for Care For Friends (f/k/a 530 Fullerton Foundation), an Illinois not-for-profit organization dedicated to providing access to services required by homeless and at-risk populations in the city of Chicago.

Sarah Walker Pauls, JP Morgan Chase

Sarah Walker Pauls is Assistant General Counsel and Vice President at JP Morgan Chase. Sarah’s practice currently focuses on commercial real estate as well as transactional and regulatory matters related to federal and state-level community development tax credit investments and related debt facilities.

Prior to joining JPMorgan, Sarah was an associate at Goldberg Kohn Ltd and later at Goodsmith Gregg & Unruh LLP, where she represented financial institutions in connection with asset-based and cash-flow commercial finance transactions, as well as commercial real estate acquisition, development and construction lending. Sarah’s civic endeavors include over 10 years of experience serving on various single-campus public charter elementary school boards.

Sarah earned her B.S. in Civil Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) with high honors, and her JD from the University of Chicago Law School.

Rebecca Piper, Hyatt Corporation

Rebecca Piper is Senior Counsel for IT Operations at Hyatt Corporation.  Rebecca is responsible for all technology-related legal matters at Hyatt including the negotiation of all global software and technology agreements.  Rebecca also provides legal support for Hyatt’s Cyber Security team on all data security matters.  Rebecca has helped initiate a pro bono practice in Hyatt’s in-house legal department.  Prior to joining the Hyatt legal department, Rebecca practiced in the Intellectual Property Transactions group at Kirkland & Ellis LLP.  Rebecca earned a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering, magna cum laude, from Washington University in St. Louis.

LaRue Robinson, Jenner & Block

LaRue L. Robinson is a senior associate at Jenner & Block LLP. His practice focuses on complex commercial litigation, ERISA litigation, and investigations. He has experience is all phases of litigation, including significant trial experience. Prior to joining Jenner, LaRue served as a Captain in the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps, where he worked as a prosecutor and lead attorney on labor and employment matters.

LaRue was recently honored as one of 35 under 35 leaders making an impact on the Chicago community. LaRue is on the board of directors of the Grant Park Music Festival and the Columbia Law School Association. He also serves on the associate boards of the Chicago Committee on Minorities in Large Law Firms and Chicago Scholars. LaRue also is a fellow with the Truman National Security Project.

LaRue received his B.S. from Cornell University, where he was vice president of his class and co-captain of the varsity sprint football team. He received his J.D. from Columbia Law School, where he served on the Student Senate and was a production editor on the Columbia Human Rights Law Review.

Emma Rodriguez-Ayala, Faegre Baker Daniels LLP

Emma Rodriguez-Ayala is a Partner at Faegre Baker Daniels’ Investment Management practice, advising investment advisers on legal, regulatory, compliance and corporate matters, both in the U.S. and internationally. She is skilled in complex alternative investment structuring, coordinating offerings for private funds, negotiating investors’ investments in private funds, and assisting with legal and compliance due diligence on private funds and investment advisers. She also helps investment advisers develop, implement, and test compliance programs that are business-focused, and she assists with regulatory reporting requirements in the U.S. and internationally.

Emma joined FaegreBD after more than seven years at Mesirow Advanced Strategies, Inc., a U.S. registered investment adviser, commodity pool operator, and commodity trading adviser. As General Counsel, she was responsible for all legal, regulatory, and compliance affairs. Emma was a member of Mesirow’s Executive and Operating Committees, and served on the boards of Mesirow’s investment funds for institutional investors. Emma began her legal career at Sidley Austin LLP’s Investment Fund, Advisers, and Derivatives practice.

Emma has served on the faculty of the Practising Law Institute since 2015. She is the Chicago Chapter President for the Association of Latino Professionals for America, overseeing a team of volunteers supporting over 6,000 members across Chicagoland. She is a member of the Chicago board of directors of iMentor, a nationwide organization that builds mentoring relationships to empower students from low-income communities to graduate high school and succeed in college. She serves as a mentor in the University of Chicago Law School Doctoroff Business Leadership Program, providing career guidance to students with the goal of increasing the number of attorneys in business leadership roles.

Emma received a B.S.B.A. summa cum laude from Saint Louis University and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School.

John Sample IV, Perkins Coie

John Sample is an associate at Perkins Coie LLP. He focuses his practice on complex litigation and labor and employment matters. John has experience litigating in both state and federal court, in a wide range of cases including breach of contract, fraud, retaliation, third-party beneficiary, and wage and hour matters. Maintaining an active pro bono practice, John assists pro bono clients with various legal matters, ranging from prisoners’ rights to retaliatory discharge claims. He has also represented multiple asylum applicants.

John serves as an Executive Committee Member of the Chicago Bar Association. He is also an Associate Board Member and Community Service Chair of the Chicago Committee for Minorities in Large Law Firms.

John obtained his B.A. in psychology from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and his J.D., magna cum laude, from University of Illinois College of Law in 2015.

Joseph Van Leer, Polsinelli

Joseph Van Leer is an associate at Polsinelli. He focuses his practice on counseling health care providers in corporate, transactional, and compliance issues, including fraud and abuse, physician arrangements, licensure, accreditation and enrollment issues, reimbursement, and general corporate and regulatory matters. Prior to joining Polsinelli, Joe worked as a health care consultant concentrating on Medicare reimbursement, co-management, and licensure and enrollment. He currently volunteers on the Development Board and Advisory Staff for the YMCA Illinois Youth and Government Program, where he trains high-school students on conducting mock trials and appellate proceedings. Joe is a frequent speaker and author on issues ranging from health care compliance and reform to hospital-physician alignment and health care fraud and abuse.

Joe obtained his B.A. from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and his J.D. from Loyola University-Chicago where he served as the Editor-in-Chief of Annals of Health Law and won the National Health Law Transactional Competition.

Ann Marie Wahls, Latham & Watkins

Ann Marie Wahls is a partner in the Litigation & Trial Department of Latham & Watkins and a member of the firm’s Intellectual Property Practice. She has extensive experience in high-stakes intellectual property business disputes with a focus on complex, multi-patent litigation matters.

Ms. Wahls has 15 years of experience litigating patent infringement matters across a range of industries. She has particular litigation and trial experience in biotechnology, oil and gas, automotive products, medical devices and cellular industries. She has litigated and tried both bench and jury trials in US federal courts and before the International Trade Commission. Ms. Wahls also has significant experience litigating federal Lanham Act false advertising and state-based unfair competition cases.

Ms. Wahls is a member of the firm’s Women Enriching Business (WEB) Committee. She also is a board member of the Coalition of Women’s Initiatives in Law and the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC).

Ms. Wahls received her B.S. in Biology from DePaul University and her J.D., with honors, from DePaul University College of Law.

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