Bill Lee

Steven Lee

Laura Coruzzi

Bruce Genderson

Dominick Conde

Charles Lipsey

Patricia Thayer

Morgan Chu

Christy Lea

Peter Armenio

Our top ten

Welcome to 10 stories about the life sciences patent industry in the United States. Our profiles of the top 10 litigators in that industry over the next few pages are intended to be personal portraits: how these leaders got into the industry, why they stayed there and – perhaps most importantly of all – why they have found such success.

If you want the detail on how we selected this top 10, skip to the methodology opposite. For now, I want to concentrate on those stories: there are some surprisingly consistent themes.

Many of the men and women in our list stumbled into patent law. Most started out as scientists, but even if they had an initial brush with intellectual property, it took a long time before they started working on patent litigation in their favoured area of science. Bill Lee of WilmerHale (page 41) took 13 years of being a lawyer before he tried his first patent case. Then again, he did spend some of those years as associate counsel to Lawrence Walsh, independent counsel in the Iran-Contra investigation.

Bill's namesake Steven Lee, of Kenyon & Kenyon (page 42), only started to consider law when his wife went to law school, and he found he liked talking to her about it over the dinner table. Morgan Chu at Irell & Manella (page 46) only graduated from UCLA because he was told to, and then went to both Yale and Harvard to study law with no intention to practise it. Patricia Thayer of Sidley Austin (page 45) practised public interest law and was considering a move into capital markets, before a chance encounter with law firm Fish & Neave threw her back towards science. "I was blown away," she says. "I could do life sciences and law and get paid."

Their passion for science is a consistent reason these four, and several others in our top 10, give for excelling in their field. Dominick Conde of Fitzpatrick Cella Harper & Scinto (page 44) says his background is "integral to my success". Steven Lee says he couldn't believe the day a senior partner asked him for an opinion on whether a particular patent infringed.

Scattered among them all are the little anecdotes that make such interviews so rewarding. Did you know that Dominick Conde dreams of playing with the 90s-era Buffalo Bills? Or that Laura Coruzzi at Jones Day (page 43) had a mentor who got his patent out by making it into a recipe for fava beans? I bet you didn't know that Morgan Chu set the world record for travelling through all of New York's subway stations on a single fare. It took just over 22 hours.

As to the methodology, the selection of this top 10 was part of the research process that went into the LMG Life Sciences 2012 directory, also published this month. The law firm rankings below are also drawn from the directory.

That process involved over 1,000 online surveys and interviews with nearly 600 attorneys in the United States, as well as a comprehensive review of case dockets. This combination of peer opinion and independent research into the highest profile, most sought-after and best-respected patent litigators working in life sciences led to the list of 10 you will see over the next few pages. Inevitably, there is no clear line between tiers of lawyers, or a satisfying, quantitative method for ranking them. The selection was always going to be subjective and qualitative. But we are pleased with our list and we hope you agree with at least part of it.

The LMG Life Sciences 2012 directory is far wider in scope than the areas covered in this top 10. It is intended to be the ultimate resource for in-house counsel identifying leading lawyers and firms in multiple practice areas focused on life sciences clients. These practice areas, which include intellectual property, regulatory, transactional and non-IP litigation, play an important role in guiding a product through its lifecycle. LMG Life Sciences 2012 will convey a granularity that has so far been absent from the market.

Simon Crompton

For more details on the directory, contact Jonathan McReynolds at jmcreynolds@euromoneyny.com

Life sciences firm rankings
General patent litigation	Hatch-Waxman patent litigation
Highly recommended	Highly recommended
Finnegan Henderson Farabow Garrett & Dunner	Finnegan Henderson Farabow Garrett & Dunner
Fitzpatrick Cella Harper & Scinto	Fish & Richardson
Irell & Manella	Fitzpatrick Cella Harper & Scinto
Jones Day	Goodwin Procter
Kirkland & Ellis	Kenyon & Kenyon
Latham & Watkins	Knobbe Martens Olson & Bear
Paul Hastings	Paul Hastings
Quinn Emanuel	Rakoczy Molino
WilmerHale	Sidley Austin
Recommended	Recommended
Covington & Burling	Cooley
Fish & Richardson	Covington & Burling
Goodwin Procter	DLA Piper
Greenberg Traurig	Greenberg Traurig
Kenyon & Kenyon	Kirkland & Ellis
McAndrews Held & Malloy	Leydig Voit & Mayer
Morgan Lewis & Bockius	McAndrews Held & Malloy
Patterson & Sheridan	Morrison Foerster
Paul Weiss	Rothwell Figg
Rakoczy Molino	Sterne Kessler Goldstein & Fox
Sidley Austin	WilmerHale
Sterne Kessler Goldstein & Fox
Williams & Connolly
Winston & Strawn

THE FAILED SCIENTIST Bill Lee WilmerHale

One fall afternoon in 1968, Bill Lee and his father took a walk. "Son," said his father, then a theoretical physics professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, "you're going to be a scientist, aren't you?"

"I am, dad," said Lee, about to start his freshman year at Harvard.

"You know," his father said, "if you want to be a scientist, you have to be a deep thinker. And well, son," he continued, this time looking Lee in the eye, "you're not."

This was unusual, as his father rarely gave advice. When a 15-year-old Lee had to choose between attending Chinese school or football practice on Saturdays, he was told by his father it was up to him. Lee chose football. In fact, Lee remembers only one other instance where his father told him what to do: to choose Harvard over Princeton (Lee had wanted to go to Princeton because his best friend was there).

Indeed, it was natural for Lee, now at WilmerHale and among the most-respected patent litigators in the country, to dream of becoming a scientist. His father was one, and so are both his younger brothers, who are professors at Harvard Medical School. Lee jokes, or perhaps genuinely believes, they are the more successful ones.

Lee has had his own successes. In 2010, he was elected to Harvard Corporation after having taught as a visiting professor at Harvard Law School. He's at the forefront of the smartphone wars, representing Apple in major patent suits against the likes of Samsung, Nokia and HTC. His clients in life sciences include Abbott Laboratories and GlaxoSmithKline. All of this more than justifies Lee's inclusion in this list of top patent litigators.

But he doesn't call himself a patent lawyer. After graduating with a joint law and MBA degree from Cornell University, Lee joined Hale & Dorr, where his mentors included the late Jim St Clair, who was President Nixon's chief Watergate lawyer, and Jerome Facher, a top civil action attorney. It would be 13 years before Lee would try his first patent case. In the meantime, Lee honed his litigation chops with matters that included serving as associate counsel to Lawrence Walsh, who was appointed independent counsel in the Iran-Contra investigation.

Then came Amgen v Chugai Pharmaceutical in 1989. The suit, in which the pharmaceutical companies fought over the right to manufacture and sell recombinant erythropoietin, was one of the first large biotech cases to reach trial. Lee represented Chugai with Hale & Dorr and lawyers from the now-dissolved Morgan & Finnegan. "Since that time, either through good or bad luck, I've been doing a lot of intellectual property litigation," he says.

Lee was born in 1950 in Schenectady, New York, but grew up in Philadelphia. His parents, Chinese immigrants who had Lee shortly after their arrival in the United States, instilled in him and his brothers three things: the importance of family ("we're all close by, and we're all very close"), education ("it's something no one can ever take away from you") and heritage. The third was not necessarily easy to do in a post-World War II America plagued by anti-Asian sentiment. "My dad always told us to be intensely proud we were Chinese and to never forget, because other people wouldn't forget either," he says.

Looking back, though, Lee says it was less of a challenge than he or perhaps his parents had anticipated. For instance, he and his wife laboured over finding a place that would be conducive to raising mixed-race children before settling on Boston. "It turned out not to be a big deal," he says. As a rising trial lawyer, Lee worried about appearing before juries that rarely saw Asian lawyers. That, too, turned out to not be a big deal. If there is ever any bias, Lee says it tends to work in his favour – Asians, as the story goes, are smart and hardworking.

In 2004, Hale & Dorr merged with Wilmer Cutler & Pickering to form what is now WilmerHale. Lee, a managing partner at Hale & Dorr, became co-managing partner of the new firm, giving him the distinction of being the first Asian-American to lead a major US law firm.

These days, Lee spends half his time in technology litigation and half in life sciences. His representations for Apple have kept him busy the past few months, and in the autumn he'll be back in court for Abbott and GSK. Because law will always trail technology, Lee says today's practitioners have to stay abreast of technological change, legislation and regulatory matters to keep pace. Biosimilars and patentable subject matter in light of the Supreme Court Prometheus decision are the big questions lawyers will continue to grapple with. Then there's the scientist in a Harvard lab that at this very moment is concocting something that will be litigated by someone else years from now. "Scientists are smarter than lawyers," Lee adds. "They're going to come up with new technologies with the perfect allocation of responsibilities for us to follow them."

Science, it turned out, was in the cards for him after all.

A CHEMIST AMONG LAWYERS Steven Lee Kenyon & Kenyon

It all started with Sputnik. Launched in 1957 by the Soviet Union, Sputnik was the first artificial satellite to orbit the earth. For the space age, it marked the beginning of a new era. For the United States, it meant its space programme was lagging. Embroiled in a space race with the USSR, the US made it its mission to develop scientists and engineers. It set the course for a slew of young innovators, among them a young Steven Lee. "It influenced a whole generation of people," says Lee, 64, of Kenyon & Kenyon. "All of a sudden, it was really something to be a scientist."

Born in 1947, in Rochester, New York, Lee grew up reading about weather and chemistry. He toyed with the idea of becoming a fireman or a policeman, but inevitably resolved to become a chemist. By the 1970s, he was well on his way. He had an undergraduate degree in chemistry from Cornell University and a PhD in organic chemistry from the University of Rochester. By the time he moved to New York City, in 1975, to join Columbia University as a post-doctoral research associate in chemistry, he had already worked as a chemist and a chemistry professor at Hamilton College in upstate New York. "It was a great period of time," he says of his four years at Columbia. "I loved it."

Then, he got married. "Being a post-doctoral fellow wasn't a career path," says Lee, who also spent a few years as a chemistry professor at Fordham University. "While I was doing that, my wife started going to law school." While chemistry didn't provide much conversation fodder between them, they found out rights, crime and constitutional law were something they could share. "We started thinking maybe I should go to law school, too," he says.

Shedding his chemist aspirations, Lee decided he would be the next Clarence Darrow – the 1920s civil liberties lawyer. After years of shuttling between the Bronx and Manhattan to teach chemistry at Fordham during the day and to take law classes at night, Lee graduated in 1983 from the university with a law degree. His new life as a young associate at Cahill Gordon & Reindel entailed corporate deals and litigation. For two years, Lee was on a team defending stockbrokers and allegedly negligent accountants at a large accounting firm in a bank failure case.

His trial experience proved integral when he moved to Kenyon & Kenyon. "Back then, there were fewer PhDs in law and even fewer with litigation experience," he says. "I came from this non-patent law firm with all this litigation experience. I wasn't put into a box." Associates with extensive science backgrounds are typically given behind-the-scenes work, like prosecution, he says.

He also found an advocate in the late Paul Heller, a senior partner at Kenyon. At Cahill, Lee hadn't been able to shake the feeling he didn't have anything to offer that the other 39 associates couldn't. But at Kenyon, Heller needed his help. "Do these guys infringe our client's patents?" Lee remembers him asking. "I'm thinking: 'What's the trick here? It's so obvious to me'," Lee says. "Here was one of the chief partners in the firm, and he was asking me." Suddenly, Lee had found his niche.

The science background, he says, is especially useful in cross-examination. There was the expert witness who never showed up to trial after Lee had asked him tough questions at deposition. "I'd like to think he was worried," Lee says, smiling. Then there was the witness who froze when Lee asked him to apply a calculation to a different set of data. The witness ended up admitting he hadn't done the calculation at all. "A lot of times, there's a rule in cross-examination to never ask questions you don't know the answers to," Lee says. "But I can give witnesses a bit more leeway, because they can't get away from me."

Overall, Lee has argued about half a dozen appeals at the Federal Circuit. In Glaxo Wellcome v Impax Laboratories, he successfully defended Impax against a claim that the company infringed a Glaxo patent covering compounds found in drugs used to treat depression and to facilitate smoking cessation.

But one of his proudest accomplishments remains a contingency case he worked on as a junior associate at Kenyon, with a team that included Heller. In Mellon v Beecham Group, Kenyon & Kenyon represented a widow whose husband had a patent on how to make designs in gelatinous material. It's a technique used on toothpaste – one of them, the wife alleged, being Beecham's Aquafresh. "It's the only contingency case I've ever been involved in, the only time I've represented individuals as opposed to corporations," Lee says. Halfway through the trial, the case settled. In return, the widow gifted Lee a glass paperweight of the earth. Now, nearly 20 years later, the globe still sits on his desk, on top of a thick stack of documents.

SCIENTIFIC ARCHAEOLOGIST Laura Coruzzi Jones Day

Why did you become an IP lawyer? I started out as a scientist and did a post-doc at Mt Sinai Medical Center. When Ronald Reagan was elected, grant money was drying up and I was looking for a job as a professor. Labs were letting people go and the market was not very good for what I wanted to do. At the same time, gene splicing was invented and Genentech was coming out publicly. There was news about the biotechnology boom everyday in the papers and I thought that perhaps the lawyers involved in early cases may not know the science. By becoming a lawyer, I could contribute something in both the science and legal industry.

How did you get into law? I worked at Shearman & Sterling as a paralegal over a few summers. I had some people pushing me to be a lawyer rather than a scientist in microbiology. It wasn't that strange an idea to put the two together. I was in the department of neurology with Dr Yahr at Mt Sinai, who pioneered L-dopa to treat Parkinson's disease. In the early days when he was doing this, the drug was a known compound and the university didn't patent it. In order to get the drug out there, he published a cookbook with the ingredients for his compound in a fava bean recipe.

If you weren't an attorney? If I didn't go into law and stuck with science, I would have become an academic and hoped to run my own research lab. I probably would have stayed with a university.

Favourite thing about the industry? The creative process of writing a patent and protecting the future development of the product. 'Science projection' is what I call it, when you get an inventor and you start discussing the invention. That can change the nature of it, from its initial conception to what it evolves into in a commercial environment. Litigation I call 'scientific archeology': it is about what people knew about a product in the past.

Location: New York City, NY Education: Fordham University, PhD in biology specialising in cell biology, with a post-doctoral fellowship at Mt Sinai School of Medicine, New York; MS in biology; BS in biology Representative matters: Myriad Genetics, represented defendant Herbalife International of America, in this patent infringement suit. Represented MedImmune against Karl-Klaus Conzelmann (and licensees Wyeth Holdings and Intervet) in a patent interference involving vaccines containing genetically manipulated paramyxoviruses

THE PHOTOGRAPHER Bruce Genderson Williams & Connolly

How did you become an IP lawyer? I did general litigation for the first 15 years of my practice. I handled matters from complex financial litigation to white-collar criminal investigations. About 20 years ago, an attorney asked me to handle a patent case for one of the firm's clients. I ended up working on an antitrust counter claim and got it dismissed within three months. I also found it interesting and when the client came to me for another case, I jumped at the chance to work in the field again.

Ever worked outside a law firm? I joined the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit after a while, and became the officer in charge of programming after being a participant for under a year. Through working with law clerks, I was able to hire many new associates from that talent pool when I rejoined private practice, and I believe that some of them are among the best patent attorneys in the industry.

Favourite part about working in this field? Taking complex technical terms and simplifying them to the judge and jury. That unique ability a litigator has to break down information to make it understandable for everyone is really important in these types of cases.

If you weren't an attorney? I have always had a strong interest in photography. I have had some photographs published in magazines and am still planning trips around my affinity for taking pictures. I am heading to Norway this year and intend to come back with some great shots of the scenery.

Favourite thing about working at your firm? My colleagues are one reason I love working in this industry. After trying and winning a case roughly nine years ago, the partner of the opposing counsel told me that if he had one of my associates, it would have been a much closer case. I think very highly of my colleagues and working with them makes the job a lot easier. Having partners who make real contributions to cases and are a pleasure to be around has been vital to my success.

Location: Washington, DC Education: Duke University, BA, history and economics. University of Pennsylvania Law School, JD Representative clients: Bayer, Eli Lilly and Alcon

PLAYING WITH THE BUFFALO BILLS Dominick Conde Fitzpatrick Cella Harper & Scinto

Why did you become an IP lawyer? I credit my engineering and technology background as the reason I got involved in IP law. With nearly 90% of my work being Hatch-Waxman litigation, I find that my background is integral to my success as a litigator in this field. I really enjoy how each individual case has its own characteristics and creates a new problem for myself and my team to solve. By being able to adapt to any situation in a courtroom, I am able to help my client deal with any new issues that may arise in the course of litigation.

What did you do before the law? After college, I knew that I eventually wanted to dive into a legal career, but was interested in doing something else before going to law school. By acquiring an ROTC (Reserve Officers Training Corps) scholarship I was able to join the Navy, working on anti-submarine warfare. My unique engineering background and abilities eventually allowed me to become a naval officer. I think my time in the Navy helped me to be more disciplined, and gave me leadership traits that help lead my team into patent litigation. I also find that I can relate to people extremely well and am able to manage large numbers of people efficiently.

If you weren't an attorney? While law has always been at the top of my career list, if I could have gone in any other direction it would have been towards the gridiron. Growing up in upstate New York, a fondness for the Buffalo Bills drew me towards playing high school football. If I hadn't gone into the legal profession, I would have loved to become a professional football player. It would have been great to have been on the field with some of those Buffalo Bills squads in the 1990s.

Location: New York, NY Education: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, BS, mechanical engineering. Franklin Pierce Law Center, JD Representative clients: Merck, Eli Lilly, Sanofi-Aventis, Daiichi Sankyo, Warner Chilcott and Bristol-Myers Squibb

WHAT I DO MATTERS Charles Lipsey Finnegan Henderson Farabow Garrett & Dunner

Why pharma litigation? I was at George Washington University law school enrolled in the LLM programme in patent and trade litigation and was in a class taught by Don Dunner. He is now also a partner at Finnegan, in fact he and I were starting at Finnegan on the same day in 1978. Dunner gave me an assignment before I started and he liked the work that I did. I spent the next decade of my life working with him in pharmaceutical litigation matters, as he had a lot of clients. My undergrad degree was in chemical engineering and I worked four years in the USPTO in various areas. I was naturally suited for the chemical area and in pharma, as opposed to the industrial area.

Favourite thing about the industry? There are two parts to that. I feel that what I do matters. I really feel that the pharmaceutical industry is one of the wonders of the modern world and it is important that IP rights be fairly and honourably enforced in order to preserve it. Sometimes that means they should be upheld and sometimes it means they should be invalidated. The second thing is, when you do this kind of litigation, you get to meet the best and the brightest in the industry. The expert witnesses or the leading minds in the industries are people that I really enjoy learning from, enhancing my own knowledge.

Favourite part about working with clients? What I have come to realise is that I enjoy providing high-quality legal services to sophisticated purchasers of legal services, and the industry is populated with talented people who sometimes become an integral part of our litigation teams. What I have most enjoyed is the camaraderie that comes from being involved in these important proceedings.

If you weren't an attorney? There are times in my life when I have felt that the practice of law merely feeds off the work of others. That people only come to us when they have a problem. Scientists that I enjoy working with make a real, positive contribution to the world and occasionally I wish mine was more substantive. But then there are times when my work makes a real difference to those people.

Location: Reston, VA Education: Georgia Institute of Technology BS, chemical engineering. Representative matters: University of California v Eli Lilly and Co. Successfully defended Lilly's human insulin product from infringement allegations. Affirmed by Federal Circuit. Eli Lilly & Co v Zenith Goldline Pharms. Successfully obtained for Lilly determination of infringement and validity of a patent on the drug product Zyprexa

DOUBLE WHAMMY Patricia Thayer Sidley Austin

Growing up in Durham, North Carolina, Patricia Thayer yearned for California. California, to her, represented the spirit of pioneering, innovation and wanderlust. There was also something about being far away from everything she knew. So, after graduating from Harvard with bachelor's and law degrees, Thayer headed west. "I had in my mind a grand vision of what California was, mainly based on reading John Steinbeck growing up, and I had no idea it was a desert," Sidley Austin's Thayer, 57, tells Managing IP. "When you actually get here and find out it never rains, and the ocean is cold – oh my gosh."

But she stayed and, but for a few "detours", has never looked back. "It's this notion of vast land," she says, "and having a bit of that balance between being inside, which is what lawyers are, and being outside." A typical day for Thayer starts with a 6 am workout at Golden Gate Park. When she gets to the office, if she's preparing for trial, the hours are long and unpredictable. Right now, she's representing Genentech against the Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania in a suit involving the drug Herceptin, which is used to treat breast cancer. "Every day I learn something that's worth learning," Thayer says. "That is the amazing part of the job – I'm learning science every day."

Science was where she always excelled. As a pre-medical student at Harvard, Thayer planned to become a research scientist. But when summers in the lab turned into periods of drudgery, she quickly realised her great love for science wouldn't necessarily make her into a great scientist. Then she had what she calls an "eye-opening, amazing" summer volunteering at a Legal Aid Society office in Stamford, Connecticut. There, she not only loved the research, the fact gathering, the problem solving, she was also good at it. "It all clicked," Thayer says. "I realised that I was not going to be a scientist but there was still something I could do with my life."

In 1984, five years after law school and having spent the last few years in public interest law, Thayer found her way back to science. She was in New York, thinking about working in securities law. While mulling over three offers from New York City firms, she happened to read a description about Fish & Neave, which, she didn't know at the time, was among the top patent litigation firms in the country. "I was blown away," she says. "I could do life sciences and law and get paid." She marched over to the office, asked to speak to the hiring partner and, after having lunch, ultimately got an offer. Thayer credits the firm for giving her a strong foundation in patent law. "They were the Wright Brothers. They were Alexander Graham Bell. They were the finest in the country," she says. "I got trained by just the best that there was."

Thayer says she was lucky. In a career that has spanned more than three decades, with a case that reached the Supreme Court (Merck v Integra Lifesciences), perhaps her biggest challenge has been navigating a male-dominated profession. "It was extremely rare to see another woman in the room with me," she says of her early years. "It does take its toll. It's hard to keep telling yourself: 'You're in the right place, you're doing the right job, you can succeed.' Perhaps hardest of all, telling yourself: 'I belong.'"

While she was surrounded by supportive male senior partners, Thayer still had moments of isolation. Patent litigation, in particular, was unique in that it's what she calls a "double whammy" – more men than women pursued litigation, and more men than women had scientific backgrounds. On top of that, there's the "horrendous" and "all-consuming" schedule. "I've seen a lot of my colleagues drop out, not because they weren't excellent," she says, "but because they just didn't want to deal with the pressure of the schedule and the lack of control over your hours." The key for aspiring female litigators, she says, is finding mentors: "I was lucky in my early years to work with some wonderful senior men, who unusually did not take the attitude of: Am I really supposed to work with you? When are you going to get married and go away?"

Not surprisingly, even the greats at Fish & Neave couldn't keep her on the East Coast for long. Two years after joining the firm, Thayer was back in California. "I'm a bit of a Type-A egghead, but I really am an outdoors person as well," she says. Amid trial preparations in late May, Thayer still found the time to run the Bay to Breakers 12-kilometre run, a 101-year-old tradition in San Francisco involving thousands of serious and less serious participants. She had planned to be in "some sort of garb" with her husband, though she said trial preparations had sapped her of her creativity. No matter. She ran the first five miles in about an hour – a personal best.

THE REBEL Morgan Chu Irell & Manella

Morgan Chu never graduated from high school. This, however, didn't stop him from applying to UCLA. When the university rejected him because he didn't have a diploma, Chu persisted until someone from the admissions office relented. "I was very lucky," says Chu, 61, of Irell & Manella. If this were a sign he was meant to be a lawyer, it would take several years – and degrees – for him to see it.

Born in 1950 in New York City, Chu grew up in Nassau County, a roughly 50-minute drive from Manhattan. He was raised in a family of scholars; just like Chu, his brothers would reach the pinnacle of their fields. One of them, Gilbert, would become a professor of medicine and biochemistry at Stanford Medical School, while the other, Steven, would win the Nobel Prize in Physics and be appointed as President Obama's secretary of energy. Chu plays down the inevitable competitiveness in the household. "We were competitive but in a friendly way," he says, laughing. "It's not competitive in the sense of being rivals, but people always wanted to do well in whatever they did, and that was taken as a given."

One title did set Chu apart from his siblings. In high school, he was part of a team listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for travelling through every New York City subway station in just over 22 hours on one fare. Fuelled by the space race against the USSR, the US poured funding into technology-related programmes like the one Chu joined. "This is in the old days, where computers had punch cards and programming was very exotic," he says. "We said, there's this longstanding record that's been in the books for more than 25 years. Let's see if we can beat it." Though the team eventually discarded the computer program because it depended on the trains running on time (they didn't, of course), they managed to devise an alternate system.

Chu's rebellious tendencies also set him apart. After his freshman year of high school, he and his family moved to Southern California. "Partly because of my age at the time, I didn't like the idea of moving," he says. Chu would forgo his high school diploma to return to the East Coast to "travel a little bit and see a little bit of the world – nothing of great note". Once back in California at UCLA, he didn't declare a major until he was told he had too many units and needed to graduate. Chu would end up with a bachelor's degree in political science. He also would obtain three more degrees – a master's and a PhD in the interdisciplinary social sciences programme from UCLA and a master of studies in law from Yale – before graduating from Harvard Law School in 1976.

Even then, Chu had no intention to practise law. "I just thought it was an interesting subject and I enjoyed learning about it," he says. "It sounds wacky, doesn't it?" His first exposure to law firms happened by chance. After seeing his classmates uncharacteristically dressed up, he went to the placement office to find out what was going on. Representatives from firms, it turned out, were interviewing students. "I remember being asked what kind of law I wanted to practise, and I said: 'I don't know if I even want to be a lawyer'," he says. "Of course, the interviewer looked cross-eyed at me."

This apparently laidback start would have no bearing on his career. For years, Chu has found himself among a handful of patent litigators companies go to for big litigation. In TiVo v EchoStar, Chu successfully represented TiVo in a $600 million patent infringement suit. Against AT&T, he helped TiVo secure a $215 million settlement.

Chu's work for City of Hope National Medical Center is among his proudest victories. In 1999, the research centre sued Genentech over royalties owed in the development of synthetic human insulin. At first, however, the case was a big failure. "The first time we took City of Hope against Genentech, we had a hung jury," Chu says. "We were knocked on our rear ends. We had to get up quickly, dust ourselves off, and figure out what we did wrong." In 2008, Genentech was ordered to pay $565 million – the largest damage award ever affirmed on appeal by California courts.

Chu's rebellious nature helps in litigation, where he's not confined to solving problems using "the old ways of doing it", as he says. Perhaps it's no surprise, then, that he names Atticus Finch, of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, as a lawyer he admires. In the novel, Finch challenges the racial biases of the deep south. "It doesn't matter whether it's working for the government or a corporate private law firm, we all have a responsibility to stand up for what's right," Chu says. "That truly is one of my grand visions of what every lawyer should be."

INSPIRED BY LA LAW Christy Lea Knobbe Martens Olson & Bear

How did you end up in California? I was born in Memphis, Tennessee. I left Memphis when I was seven years old and lived all around Texas and Oklahoma. I went to high school in Texas, and then went to the University of Mississippi on full scholarship. From there, I went to law school at the University of Texas, and after law school I think I was looking to do something different. My best friend in high school lived in California, and I'd been to visit there, so that's where I ended up.

Why did you become an IP lawyer? Ever since elementary school I had wanted to be a lawyer – a criminal defence attorney, probably from watching Perry Mason and LA Law. But once I majored in chemical engineering, it made sense to do patent law. I always found the idea of litigating to be exciting and interesting.

Why life sciences? I was always good at maths and chemistry, so my parents encouraged me to pursue chemical engineering. With engineering in particular, what appeals is the idea of being a trained problem-solver. Chemical engineers are trained problem-solvers, so I use my problem-solving skills on a daily basis to achieve solutions for clients.

What has been your experience of being a woman in a man's world? Well, I think it's common for adversaries to underestimate women attorneys. It is a significant advantage. In my case, they usually stop underestimating me after I take the first deposition. I always try to format the deposition so the opponent cannot see the point that's coming.

What is your advice for aspiring female litigators? Be very careful about which law firm you choose. Look for a firm that supports female attorneys and supports a work/life balance.

What do you do in your spare time?I play with my children and spend time with my husband. I have a five-year-old daughter and a two-year-old son. My daughter is on the swim team, which makes things very busy.

Location: Irvine, California Education: University of Mississippi, BS, chemical engineering, University of Texas School of Law, JD Representative matters: Lupin Atlantis Holdings v Ranbaxy Labs. Represented defendants in patent infringement suit in the Southern District of New York. The case settled. Kinetic Concepts v Smith & Nephew. Successfully obtained invalidity ruling due to obviousness in the Western District of Texas

STORIES ARE AMMUNITION Peter Armenio Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan

Why did you become an IP lawyer? I majored in chemistry in college and followed that up with work at a pharmaceutical company, which allowed me to get an early start in intellectual property and life sciences. Even though I ended up doing several types of litigation work initially, I always had a desire to build a life sciences litigation practice. I believe it is my passion for the industry and the technical aspects of my client's issues have helped me become among the top IP litigators in the life sciences community.

Favourite thing about the industry? I relish the idea that in order to do the best work possible for a client, there needs to be 100% clear communication between all parties involved. By communicating properly with the client, I am able to present my argument in a fashion that the judge or jury can understand, even though the elements of the case are extremely complex. It is these communication skills that I value and have allowed me to succeed in the courtroom.

Favourite thing about working with clients? Behind every great drug invention is an equally impressive story. That is how I look at my client's creations and explain to judges and juries the work and effort that my clients have put forward in coming up with their life-changing invention. I have a good understanding of the value of a client's IP and am able to use his experiences in the laboratory as ammunition during litigation.

If you weren't an attorney? Growing up in New Jersey, I was always partial to the pharmaceutical marketplace. My father had a PhD and ran a laboratory for Bayer, exposing me to the pharmaceutical industry at a very young age. While being an attorney was always in my future, part of me believes that medical research would have been another area I could have gone into.

Location: New York, NY Education: Bucknell University, BA, chemistry. Seton Hall University School of Law, JD Representative clients: Covidien, Forest Laboratories, GlaxoSmithKline and Meda Pharmaceuticals