Kalpana Srinivasan

Kalpana Srinivasan has made a formidable mark as the first female managing partner at Susman Godfrey LLP. She’s also a member of Sen. Alex Padilla’s Judicial Evaluation Commission for the Central District of California.

In 2023, Srinivasan led Intercontinental Exchange through a complex $11.7 billion acquisition of Black Knight Inc. on behalf of her client, ICE, skillfully overcoming the Federal Trade Commission’s challenges.

“Representing ICE in its litigation with the FTC over a $12 billion merger required working around the clock to position the issues strategically for a fast-approaching preliminary injunction hearing,” she said. “Based on the work of my team, we persuaded the government to dismiss its injunction claim even while we still worked out a consent deal to let the merger proceed. We were able to utilize novel procedures to address the demands of a tight merger deadline and reach a successful result for the client.”

Her adept litigation skills were also evident as she secured a confidential multimillion-dollar settlement in the Telescopes Antitrust Litigation and adeptly resolved patent infringement claims for the California Institute of Technology against Samsung.

“Caltech’s litigation of its seminal Wi-Fi patents against Samsung in the Eastern District of Texas highlighted the cutting-edge and ground-breaking work of the university,” Srinivasan said. “The case underscored the critical importance of this technology to Wi-Fi networks and consumers’ use of devices on those networks.”

Furthermore, her legal dexterity led to an $18.8 million settlement in a case involving healthcare analytics, showcasing her versatility and commanding presence in high-stakes litigation.

Srinivasan’s work extends to notable cases like representing Yale University in trade secret and contract breach claims and litigating against AsusTek on behalf of Atlas Global.

“Explaining complex issues to judges and juries always remains the critical task in any big dispute, especially ones with time-sensitive, high-stakes issues at hand, or that involve highly complex technology,” Srinivasan said. “With just a few days or sometimes only a few hours to whittle down and present the key issues, it forces hyper-focus on what matters and the ability to quickly manage sideshows and marginal points.”

Sharing insights regarding her work, she noted: “How to value data is an increasingly critical issue in almost all legal cases. Many of my cases in the intellectual property space involve theft by reverse engineering or learning from data sets. How companies protect against and litigate threats to use of their valuable data will become an increasingly hot area for high-stakes litigation.”