The POWER 30: Sybil Dunlop

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After clerking for Robins Kaplan, and then Rosenbaum, she joined Greene Espel, where she could start practicing right away. On her first day, she took a deposition in New York.

(OK, it was in upstate New York and not Manhattan, but still.)

What was attractive about Greene Espel, and still is, is that it is a direct democracy, said Dunlop. She interviewed with the whole firm, where everyone runs their own practice. It doesn’t have a managing partner. “We have no king and we don’t want one,” Dunlop said. Her client list has expanded to include 3M, Target, Cargill and Residio.

She is reputed for her client care, probably because she focuses on the client’s goals. “I try to figure out the path out,” Dunlop said. “I think if you get fixated on a problem and lose sight of the path out, it’s like getting lost in the maze at IKEA. I lead every conversation with, ‘What is your goal?’”

When the client’s goals change, a lawyer can still aim the ship in the right direction, she continued. “We’ve got a plan and we’ve got a way out.”

Dunlop is ambitious and not embarrassed to be, something she said she learned from reading Ron Chernow’s book about Alexander (“I’m not throwing away my shot”) Hamilton. She loves to win cases, and started a niche to make that happen by teaching CLEs on implicit bias, which developed into the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion area at Green Espel, along with attorneys Jenny Gassman-Pines and Amran Farah and certified legal manager Laura Broomell.

The DEI practice has grown to be about 25 percent of Dunlop’s cases. She expects the practice to make several hundred thousand dollars this year, compared to nothing last year.

“There is a huge need for [it] and it’s a real skill for a litigator,” she said. It’s not that attorneys are racist, but getting through implicit biases is the ultimate litigation challenge, Dunlop said. “To change the world we have to get the best ideas on the table.”

The other 75 percent of her practice includes representing Fortune 100 companies and helping clients evaluate, assess and litigate intellectual property disputes. As part of her IP practice, she represents clients before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, including the first patent owner to score a complete victory in a Covered Business Method proceeding.

One of her recent successes was the seizure of more than a million suspected counterfeit 3M N95 respirators from a warehouse in Lexington, Kentucky, the latest in a string of fake N95 confiscations amounting to more over 52 million counterfeit N95 masks globally. More seizures are planned.

Dunlop said she is a lawyer for feminist reasons: “I want interesting cases and I want to lead them. I want to change what our profession looks like. I want to be a powerful person who can change the profession.”