Kate Geyer: Breaking Institutional Bias

04/29/22 • 56 min

This episode introduces the new co-host of the Sidebars podcast, Kate Geyer. Kate is an Associate in Kilpatrick Townsend’s Seattle office. Her practice focuses on patent litigation in federal court and at the ITC, as well as post-grant proceedings before the U.S. Patent Office.
Kate is a 2019 graduate of George Washington University Law School. She graduated with high honors, Order of the Coif, and won the Rothwell, Figg, Ernst & Manbeck Award. While in law school, in addition to being a research assistant and an articles editor for the George Washington Law Review, Kate also won the 2018 and 2019 AIPLA’s Giles S. Rich Memorial Moot Court Competition and served as a judicial intern for the honorable Kara Stoll Carto on the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and as a law clerk in the Office of Unfair Import Investigations at the ITC.
Prior to law school, Kate graduated from MIT with a BS in physics and minors in mathematics and political science, then followed her passion for the intersection of technology and policy to a position as a business analyst in Washington, DC, dissecting emerging technologies for the Department of Defense and Intelligence Community customers.
In this episode, Kate shares her journey to becoming the patent litigator and fierce advocate she is today. This journey also built her determination to break the barriers and institutional biases that still persist for women and minorities in patent law, and to create a more welcoming and inclusive profession - one in which there is a seat at the table for everyone.
Highlights include:

Introducing the new co-host of Sidebars (0:38)
Turns out, learning physics and doing physics are not the same thing (2:44)
Finding practical ways to indulge a passion for tech and policy (3:44)
Participating in the arena, expanding one’s horizons, finding law school (4:47)
Breaking “it’s not what we do around here” institutional norms (8:33)
A multigenerational perspective on gender barriers and mentorship (10:59)
The unexpected dynamics of being a young and female litigator (14:40)
New opportunities for younger attorneys (15:59)
The importance of giving associates freedom from micromanagement (20:29)
Taking ownership and handling mistakes (26:00)
Finding a job you love (28:48)
Perfectionism and not being the smartest person in the room (31:13)
Getting over fears with practice (37:22)
Crushing arguments with preparation (43:35)
The critical need to address the shortage of women and minorities in leadership (48:40)

Thanks for listening to Sidebars! Connect with us:

Learn more about April Abele Isaacson
Check out other insights from Kilpatrick
Subscribe to our YouTube Channel
Questions or feedback? Reach out at [email protected]
Learn more about Kilpatrick

**The opinions expressed are those of the attorneys and do not necessarily reflect the views of the firm or its clients. This podcast is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal advice.

Introducing the new co-host of Sidebars (0:38)
Turns out, learning physics and doing physics are not the same thing (2:44)
Finding practical ways to indulge a passion for tech and policy (3:44)
Participating in the arena, expanding one’s horizons, finding law school (4:47)
Breaking “it’s not what we do around here” institutional norms (8:33)
A multigenerational perspective on gender barriers and mentorship (10:59)
The unexpected dynamics of being a young and female litigator (14:40)
New opportunities for younger attorneys (15:59)
The importance of giving associates freedom from micromanagement (20:29)
Taking ownership and handling mistakes (26:00)
Finding a job you love (28:48)
Perfectionism and not being the smartest person in the room (31:13)
Getting over fears with practice (37:22)
Crushing arguments with preparation (43:35)
The critical need to address the shortage of women and minorities in leadership (48:40)

Thanks for listening to Sidebars! Connect with us:

Learn more about April Abele Isaacson
Check out other insights from Kilpatrick
Subscribe to our YouTube Channel
Questions or feedback? Reach out at [email protected]
Learn more about Kilpatrick

Previous Episode

Looking Back on Season One

In this episode, hosts April Abele Isaacson and Kimberlynn Davis along with the podcast’s producer, Kristina Travaillot, reflect on the first season of the Sidebars podcast and provide a preview of Season Two.

Sidebars, the first podcast released by Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton LLP, grew out of April’s, Kim’s, and Kristina’s shared recognition that underrepresented voices in patent law had many valuable things to say. A podcast seemed like the perfect platform to showcase trailblazing women and members of other underrepresented communities. The resulting 14 episodes of Season One created a tapestry of interesting, honest, and sometimes even raw conversations that never fail to move listeners.

In this episode, April, Kim, and Kristina discuss the many surprises they encountered in bringing Sidebars to fruition and the work that is yet to be done in their journey to help the practice of patent law continue to grow in diversity and inclusion.

Highlights include:

The power of authenticity to awe and inspire (2:10)
The unexpected value of launching a podcast in the middle of a pandemic (3:23)
Realizing that there is more to say (8:18)
Season Two’s focus on the realities of seasoned and rookie women patent litigators (9:11)
Fostering an environment where everyone is a unicorn (11:14)
Paying it forward by spotlighting and breaking biases (22:22)
Tackling the self-editing that members of underrepresented groups impose on themselves (25:11)
The shifting norms of acceptable behavior (26:25)
Dealing with unfounded assumptions and taking back your power (31:25)
Finding new ways to build bigger tables so many more people can have a seat at it (40:00)
The difference that hearing actual voices makes (43:12)

Thanks for listening to Sidebars! Connect with us:

Learn more about April Abele Isaacson
Check out other insights from Kilpatrick
Subscribe to our YouTube Channel
Questions or feedback? Reach out at [email protected]
Learn more about Kilpatrick

Next Episode

Rachel Rebouché and Paul R. Gugliuzza: Shining the Spotlight On Gender Inequality in Patent Litigation

In this episode, we welcome Temple University professors Rachel Rebouché and Paul Gugliuzza, authors of a forthcoming paper in the North Carolina Law Review titled, “Gender Inequality in Patent Litigation” —a data-rich paper that touches on many of the central themes in Season 2.

Rachel is a leading scholar in feminist legal theory, reproductive health law, and family law. She is the Interim Dean of Temple University Beasley School of Law, the James E. Beasley Professor of Law, and a Faculty Fellow at Temple’s Center for Public Health Law Research. Rachel is an author of Governance Feminism: An Introduction and an editor of Governance Feminism: Notes from the Field, a co-author of the sixth edition of the casebook, Family Law, and the editor of Feminist Judgments: Family Law Opinions Rewritten. Rachel received a JD from Harvard law school, an LLM from Queen's University Belfast, and a BA from Trinity University.

Paul is an award-winning scholar, a sought-after author, and a teacher who specializes in civil procedure, federal courts, and intellectual property law with a particular focus on patent litigation. He has testified before both the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives on topics of patent law, and his scholarship has been cited in over a dozen judicial opinions across all levels of the state and federal courts. A summa cum laude graduate from Tulane University School of Law, Paul clerked for Judge Ronald M. Gould of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and practiced in the Issues and Appeals group at Jones Day prior to his academic career.

In this episode, Rachel and Paul discuss the shocking gender disparity that continues to persist in private-practice patent litigation and the much more equitable distribution of legal work in government agencies. They also highlight the mechanisms that militate against greater equity in law firms.

Rachel’s and Paul’s paper shows unequivocally that gender disparity is neither a generational issue that will be resolved by the passage of time nor is it a pipeline issue due to insufficient female STEM lawyers. Through their research, we gain a greater understanding of how law firms must change their economic incentives and entrenched, unconscious cultures if they are to foster true gender equity.

Further Reading:
• Overqualified and Underrepresented: Gender Inequality in Pharmaceutical Patent Law
• Extraordinary Writ or Ordinary Remedy? Mandamus at the Federal Circuit
• @TempleLaw
• @RRebouche
•

Thanks for listening to Sidebars! Connect with us:

Learn more about April Abele Isaacson
Check out other insights from Kilpatrick
Subscribe to our YouTube Channel
Questions or feedback? Reach out at [email protected]
Learn more about Kilpatrick

Sidebars - Kate Geyer: Breaking Institutional Bias

Transcript

April Abele Isaacson00:00:08.279

Welcome to Sidebars, Kilpatrick Townsend's limited podcast series focused on women and underrepresented groups in patent law. I'm April Abele Isaacson , a patent litigator and office managing partner of the San Francisco office.

Kate Geyer00:00:23.539

And I'm Kate Geyer, a patent litigation associate in Seattle. We're here to discuss the gender gap in the patent bar and have candid conversations with fem