The Alumni Newsletter caught up with Laurie Mims, who joined W&C in 2003.
In 2005, Laurie joined Keker & Van Nest in San Francisco and became a partner in 2009. Laurie lives in Pleasant Hill, CA with her husband, Derek, who Laurie described as “the former U.S. Air Force Pilot who dragged her away from D.C. to CA,” along with their three young sons Dylan (7), Evan (5), and Logan (2). Laurie and her family love Pleasant Hill because they get a real summer (“sun and heat for swimming, not the foggy, cold San Francisco summer of Mark Twain lore”) and are closer to skiing in Tahoe in the winter.
Laurie focuses the majority of her practice on representing venture-backed biotech companies and venture capital firms in contractual disputes and in
securities litigation. “I love these cases because you are working closely with biotech executives and scientists who are passionate about the drugs or biotech innovations that they are developing, and the cases are usually true bet-the-company cases where future development of the company’s one leading drug or product is on the line.” One of Laurie’s proudest moments was when a hard-fought litigation battle—waged with her partner and fellow W&C alum, Stuart Gasner—enabled a “courthouse door” settlement, allowing their biotech client to move forward with development of a much more tolerable version of a lifesaving drug for children with a very rare genetic disease.
Laurie, Stuart, and the other W&C alums currently at Keker & Van Nest—Nick Goldberg, Chris Kearney, and Paven Malhotra—often joke about being W&C “ex-pats” and look forward to reconnecting with other alums in the Bay Area.