Friday, September 18, 2009
Page 3
Katten’s Helen Kim Takes Helm of Women Lawyers Association
By a MetNews Staff Writer
Attorney Helen B. Kim, a securities litigation partner in Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP’s Los Angeles and New York offices, is the new president of the Women Lawyers of Los Angeles.
Kim was to be installed at WLALA’s 90th anniversary event last night at the Omni Los Angeles Hotel, taking over from outgoing President Katherine M. Forster of Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP.
Kim assumes the WLALA presidency less than a year after the end of her term as president of the 40,000-member National Asian Pacific American Bar Association.
Founded in 1919, WLALA is the oldest and largest local women’s bar association in California. Its members include federal and state court judges as well as lawyers from every sector of the legal profession.
According to its mission statement, the group is “dedicated to promoting the full participation of women lawyers and judges in the legal profession, maintaining the integrity of our legal system by advocating principles of fairness and equality, improving the status of women in our society including their exercise of equal rights and reproductive choice, and actively working towards the furtherance of these goals through WLALA’s committees, sections and activities.”
Kim said that she was “deeply honored to serve” as the group’s next president and “particularly proud to be the first Asian-American to lead the organization.”
She added:
“Unfortunately, the need for WLALA, its work and its programs is greater than ever. Although women have comprised nearly half of our nation’s law school graduates for the past 20 years, they have not yet achieved parity with men in the legal profession or in our society as a whole. I look forward to working with WLALA and its dedicated membership to advance the promotion and retention of women in the legal profession.”
Kim currently represents public and private companies and their directors, officers and principal shareholders in complex commercial litigation, including the defense of securities and other class actions, shareholder derivative suits and regulatory investigations.
A graduate of Harvard College, Kim is a classical pianist, and performed with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at age 10 before opening the Mostly Mozart Festival at the Hollywood Bowl a year later.
She received a master’s degree in classical piano performance from Juilliard in 1984, but later switched to law and in 1988 was admitted to practice law in both California and New York after attending Yale Law School.
Kim, who lives in Hancock Park with her husband, attorney Richard E. Nathan, is a co-editor of the American Bar Association’s Litigation Section’s Securities Litigation Journal, a member of the ABA’s Commission on Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Profession, and a member of the Los Angeles County Bar’s Judicial Appointments Committee.
Copyright 2009, Metropolitan News Company