Juanita R. Brooks

After 41 years in the industry, Juanita Brooks says things are getting better for women attorneys but still have a ways to go.

“Back in the late 70s I don’t think people even recognized the idea of a hostile work environment or any kind of diversity initiative,” Juanita said. “It was sort of a given. To become a big time lawyer, you had to be white and you had to be male. It is getting better but it’s still not anywhere where it should be.”

She said among patent litigators, among whom Brooks is regarded as one of the best in the country, women are drastically underrepresented.

“A lot of attorneys that go into patent litigation do so because they have technical degrees, and women are obviously underrepresented in that area, so you end up with much fewer women in the world of patent litigation than you might in some other area,” Brooks said.

“Then there is this myth that women can’t do science, and so you’re not going to be taken seriously when you try to tackle some technical issues or put on an expert or cross examine an expert and those are all challenges that continue to this day,” Brooks said.

She debunks that myth often.

Brooks recently served as lead counsel representing Apple Inc. in its massive $30 billion legal battle with Qualcomm Inc., which settled unexpectedly moments after opening statements concluded.

In 2016, she served as lead counsel in a product liability mass tort litigation involving the use of acid concentrate products during dialysis.

“It truly was a ‘mass’ tort,” Brooks said recalling it included roughly 2,500 cases filed in the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts.

By using a novel defense strategy, she and her team at Fish & Richardson prevailed at trial in two bellwether cases, resulting in a favorable global settlement. In re Fresenius GranuFlo/NaturaLyte Dialysate Products Liability Litigation. 13-md-02428 (Mass., filed March 29, 2013).

— Blaise Scemama