K&L Gates Names Nearly 35 New Partners, Of Counsel, and Policy Professionals Across Firm

The partners of global law firm K&L Gates LLP have voted to elect the following individuals from across the firm’s global platform as new partners, of counsel, government affairs counselors, and government affairs advisors with the firm, effective January 1. The group comprises 33 individuals from all nine of the firm’s practice areas and representing 18 offices, including Berlin, Charleston, Charlotte, Chicago, Houston, London, Los Angeles, Luxembourg, Milan, Nashville, New York, Pittsburgh, Raleigh, Research Triangle Park, Seattle, Sydney, Tokyo, and Washington, D.C. 

K&L Gates Global Managing Partner Jim Segerdahl stated: “We’re pleased to promote such an impressive group of individuals as new partners and to other important positions within our firm. Their skill, dedication, and commitment to outstanding service will benefit the firm and our clients around the globe for years to come. We look forward to our continuing collaboration and offer our sincere congratulations for their latest achievement.”  

The lawyers joining the firm’s partnership are:

Susanne Albrecht-Roggenstroh (Berlin) is a member of the Asset Management and Investment Funds practice area. She advises investors, fund managers, and other finance market participants on legal, regulatory, and tax aspects linked to this sector. She also focuses on advising initiators of closed-end funds as well as institutional investors with respect to fund investments.

Kevin Alonso (Nashville) advises health care clients on a variety of transactional, regulatory, and operational matters. His experience includes mergers and acquisitions involving hospitals, physician practices, and ambulatory surgery centers; health information privacy and security issues; health care fraud and abuse issues; ambulatory surgery center regulatory and operational issues; fee-for-service and value-based contracting with Medicare Advantage plans; and Medicare Advantage sales and marketing compliance. 

Maggie Blair (Charlotte) represents public and private companies, private equity funds, and private credit providers in a variety of financing transactions. She focuses her practice on private credit and private equity transactions, advising private credit firms and institutional investors on direct lending transactions. She also advises private equity firms and their portfolio companies on leveraged buyouts.

John Carlson (Seattle) works on a range of commercial real estate transactional matters, including acquisitions, dispositions, leasing, and financing. He has experience working on a variety of real estate assets, including agricultural, renewables, natural resources, multifamily, office, retail, hospitality, and industrial.

Vincenzo Chimera (Chicago) concentrates his practice on toxic tort matters, including defense of matters involving exposures to asbestos, benzene, and other alleged contaminants. He has a proven track record of success for his clients at both the trial and appellate levels. 

Sarah Decker (Pittsburgh) is a commercial litigator and disputes lawyer with extensive experience representing clients in multiple segments within the manufacturing industry, and in the areas of commercial and consumer products, among other areas. She regularly represents and counsels public and private companies and individuals in a wide variety of complex commercial matters, including contract disputes, business torts, supply chain management, product liability, personal injury, oil and gas, and intellectual property matters.

Jacob Derr (Washington, D.C.) is a member of the Asset Management and Investment Funds practice area. He regularly advises registered investment companies and their independent board members with respect to regulatory and compliance matters arising under US federal securities laws and related regulatory provisions.

Clare Frederick (Chicago) provides clients with IP counseling and portfolio management services, including global management of domestic and foreign patent portfolios, as well as freedom to operate, patentability, and infringement analyses. She has experience drafting, prosecuting, and analyzing patent applications as well as drafting licenses and nondisclosure agreements, appeals before the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s Patent Trial and Appeal Board, and providing litigation support.

Trevor Gates (Seattle) represents a range of clients with respect to sports, entertainment, and media transactions and related issues. He has extensive experience with respect to sponsorship, endorsement, and marketing agreements; player agreements; licensing and naming rights agreements; stadium and arena use agreements; and media rights agreements, including for television and film.

Julian Grant (London) focuses his practice on representing private equity sponsors on domestic and cross-border acquisitions, carve outs, joint ventures, public to private transactions, and special situation investments. He works across a number of sectors, including technology, aerospace, financial services, health care, consumer, and retail. He also has extensive experience acting for management teams on buyouts and exits.

Cooper Hawley (Charleston) represents publicly and privately-held companies, including private equity funds and their portfolio companies, in connection with mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, and other negotiated transactions. He also counsels investors in structuring and executing preferred equity investments and start-up and emerging growth companies in connection with capital raising transactions.

Jessica Kang (Seattle) is experienced in management-side employment and labor law issues, including litigation, transactional, and advice and counsel matters. She provides day-to-day advice and counseling regarding employment law matters and works with national and international companies to draft and maintain global, national, and state law compliant employee handbooks and personnel documents. She is experienced at providing management and employee training on topics including sexual harassment, discrimination, retaliation and abuse conduct, how to conduct effective investigations, and management training on compliance with wage and hour laws.

J.D. Koesters (Research Triangle Park, Charleston) advises clients on internal investigations and government enforcement actions in a variety of industries and contexts. As a Certified Information Privacy Professional in the US (CIPP/US) and a former national security advisor for Army Cyber Command, he works with clients on emerging issues involving data privacy regulations, cybersecurity requirements, and data breach incidents.

Justin Leonelli (Pittsburgh) represents owners and contractors on public and private construction projects globally. He services clients through various project phases as both project counsel and litigation counsel. His representative projects include wind farms (offshore and onshore), battery storage facilities, solar fields, power plants, coal mines, oil refineries, wastewater treatment facilities, rail and road infrastructure, telecommunications infrastructure, manufacturing facilities, and commercial office buildings, among many others.

Avril Love (Los Angeles) has considerable knowledge of and experience with the US Food and Drug Administration’s regulatory regime and enforcement activities. She has defended companies in numerous industries facing consumer and e-commerce claims based on products liability, advertising, marketing practices, website accessibility, consumer contracts, data security, and privacy issues. She also has defended clients facing regulatory enforcement over quality and import/export issues, as well as business-to-business disputes involving antitrust, fraud, trade secrets, and other torts. 

Leila Moddel (Sydney) represents clients across a wide spectrum of employment law and industrial relations including discrimination, enterprise bargaining, complex workplace investigations, restructuring, and redundancies. In addition, she advises on the termination of employment arrangements, including unfair dismissal, unlawful termination, and adverse action claims, as well as restraints of trade and the protection of confidential information and trade secrets. She also works on the employment aspects of commercial and transactional issues including mergers and acquisitions, share sale arrangements, transfer of business, and transfer of employment situations.

Felisa Sanchez (Houston) has a broad practice in maritime commerce and financing as well as a general finance practice that spans multiple industries. She has extensive experience helping clients with a wide range of global maritime commerce and finance needs - helping them structure and document deals and also counseling them when issues arise after closing.

Anderson Shackelford (Research Triangle Park) represents health systems, hospitals, surgery centers, home health and hospice agencies, skilled nursing facilities, assisted living facilities, psychiatric/behavioral health providers, physician groups, and other health care providers on regulatory issues and litigation. He has experience with certificate of need, payment and reimbursement, contract, medical staff privilege, HIPAA, and EMTALA disputes. He practices before a variety of tribunals across the country, including various state and federal courts, administrative fora, and arbitration/dispute resolution services. 

Robert Sovesky’s (Pittsburgh) experience includes procurement and management of patent and trademark portfolios, strategic worldwide patent application filing counseling, technology roadmap counseling, freedom-to-operate analyses, clearance searches, patentability analysis, landscape analysis, due diligence analysis, infringement/non-infringement opinions, validity/invalidity opinions, and government subject invention determinations.

Emily Steele (Raleigh) focuses her practice on the representation of secured and unsecured creditors in restructuring and insolvency matters. She represents clients in a variety of contexts in bankruptcy proceedings, including litigation involving the automatic stay, adequate protection, use of cash collateral, assumptions and rejections of executory contracts and unexpired leases, Chapter 11 plan confirmation and interpretation, section 363 asset sales, and fraudulent conveyance and preference litigation.

Landon Sullivan (Seattle) is a real estate transactions lawyer with more than a decade of combined in-house and private practice experience counseling clients in connection with various transaction types (including leases, acquisitions and dispositions, mortgage-based financing, and economic development incentives) and essentially all asset classes (ranging from industrial, data center, retail, office, and other commercial uses to multifamily and mixed uses).

Claire Hansen Suni (Seattle) has more than a decade of transactional experience serving clients across many industries, but is particularly active in the renewable energy and infrastructure sectors. She regularly executes deals involving investments in solar, wind, biogas, and other energy projects at many stages of development, construction, and operation. Additionally, her practice includes representing corporate and institutional purchasers of carbon removals directly from the owners and operators of carbon capture and sequestration projects. She has advised on some of the largest-ever carbon removal offtake deals by volume to date.

Clare Tanner (London) acts on a range of cross-border and domestic commercial disputes with a particular focus on insolvency, banking, finance, and professional negligence cases. She acts for creditors, officeholders, debtors, directors, and other stakeholders in contentious insolvency situations including fraud related matters. Additionally, she advises corporate trustees, service providers, and other transaction parties in structured finance disputes.

Jacob Trevick (Chicago) works with multinationals and private equity firms on a variety of tax issues, including global intangible low-taxed income planning, foreign tax credit utilization, post-merger integration, intellectual property alignment, as well as cross-border acquisitions and dispositions.

Bruno Vascellari (Milan) concentrates his practice mainly on corporate and commercial non-contentious matters, with strong experience in M&A transactions and a focus also on corporate lending. His experience includes negotiating and drafting joint venture and shareholders agreements, asset purchase agreements and stock purchase agreements, and advising on corporate governance matters.

Thomas Warns (New York) is a litigator and disputes lawyer with significant trial and arbitration experience in matters arising across the US and internationally. He is well-versed in all aspects of the disputes practice, from cutting edge discovery issues, including electronic discovery challenges, to motions practice, all the way through to trial and/or arbitration hearing and the appellate process. In addition to his busy and varied litigation and disputes practice, he maintains an active pro bono portfolio and has represented charter schools in litigation against a government agency, as well as indigent individuals in family and immigration court.

Marion Zeller (Luxembourg) has extensive experience in advising on direct and indirect tax matters to institutional investors, private equity houses, and alternative investment funds on cross-border investments all over Europe and abroad, including advising on the structuring of international acquisitions via Luxembourg regulated and non-regulated investment vehicles. She focuses on transaction structuring and tax advisory matters, assisting clients in meeting the highest standards of tax governance in the increasingly challenging international post-base erosion and profit shifting tax environment.

Lawyers named of counsel with the firm are:

Jessica Cohn (Washington, D.C.) is a member of the firm’s Asset Management and Investment Funds practice area, and advises registered investment companies and their independent board members on regulatory, compliance, and transactional matters arising under the US federal securities laws and related regulatory provisions, including on issues related to fund organization, registration, regulatory filings, changes to and the implementation of investment strategies, acquisitions and fund adoption transactions, and utilizing a manager-of-managers structure.

Yuki Sako (Washington, D.C., Tokyo) is a member of the firm’s Asset Management and Investments Funds practice, and advises clients on federal and state bank regulatory issues under the Dodd-Frank Act, the Bank Holding Company Act of 1956, the International Banking Act of 1978, the National Bank Act, the Federal Deposit Insurance Act, and state banking laws. She assists global and domestic banking institutions with respect to their investment fund-related activities, fiduciary activities, and collaborations with technology companies.

Derek Stevens (Charlotte) has extensive experience advising financial services firms on commercial real estate finance, mortgage loan servicing, and securitization transactions. He focuses his practice on representing depositors, underwriters, placement agents, and servicers in commercial mortgage-backed securities.   

Individuals named government affairs counselors with the firm are:

Scott Aliferis (Washington, D.C.) has an extensive legislative background, serving for nine years under Congressman Fred Upton, former Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce committee. As the legislative director and principal policy advisor in the office, he was responsible for the development and oversight of Congressman Upton’s legislative agenda in the House of Representatives. He handled telecommunications and media issues under consideration by the House Energy and Commerce committee, including the 1992 Cable Act and the 1996 Telecommunications Act. He brings all of this experience to bear on behalf of clients with opportunities and challenges in these areas.

Laurie Purpuro’s (Washington, D.C.) practice has focused on the intersection of the energy industry and federal and state government policy for three decades, working closely with the US Departments of Energy and Agriculture and Congress to advance clients’ business goals. Her client base includes renewable and clean energy clients, with a focus on renewable fuel, energy efficiency, solar, water power, industrial emissions reduction, and hydrogen, as well as clients in the chemical, maritime education, and agriculture spaces. Most recently, this work has included work on emissions reduction policy, including carbon utilization and innovative agricultural policy issues. 

Individuals named government affairs advisors with the firm are:

Lauren Flynn (Washington, D.C.) focuses on employee benefits, corporate social responsibility, retirement, tax, and financial services issues. Lauren works with a variety of clients, including Fortune 500 companies, tax-exempt entities, and member associations, to develop and implement policy strategies to address a multitude of federal legislative and regulatory issues, including coordinating complex outreach campaigns and drafting comment letters and correspondence to government agencies.