Finnegan Elects Former Summer Associate as Managing Partner

Effective July 1, 2022, Erika Harmon Arner will serve as managing partner of Finnegan's 11 offices worldwide. Erika joined the firm in 1999 as a summer associate and has spent her entire career at Finnegan. She currently leads the firm's largest practice group—electrical and computer technology—and has been lead counsel in over 200 Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) proceedings.

As managing partner, Erika will focus on finding strategic ways to maintain and improve the qualities that differentiate Finnegan from other firms. Erika said, "We have hundreds of trained scientists who are here practicing patent law. So, when we go in with a team to a client, they know they’re getting a huge bench of both technical depth and breadth across all the practice area."

Diversity will also be an area of focus for Erika, particularly as it relates to retaining talent. "The inclusive culture we have [at Finnegan] is key to our success. If you look at our diversity numbers against the Am Law 100, we outpace them at all of the levels of gender and racial diversity—both in the shareholder partners and for the attorney population at large. We’ve always been at or near the top, and that’s through the intentional efforts of the firm over decades to be a big inclusive tent."

Erika added, "I am fortunate to work at a firm where partners have many opportunities to participate in firm management and one that has a history of promoting diverse talent to leadership positions. Finnegan doesn’t just say we’re diverse; diversity is woven into the firm’s culture, and I want to ensure that continues."

Erika is a longstanding champion for women in IP. She was a co-founder of the PTAB Bar Association and served as the organization’s first female president. Erika helped co-found, with others, Finnegan’s women’s business initiative, Finnegan FORWARD, to create and support initiatives to address issues impacting women attorneys in intellectual property. She also co-founded the Washington, DC chapter of The Women in IP Network (WIN). Erika serves in leadership roles on the women’s committees of the Intellectual Property Owner’s Association (IPO) and the PTAB Bar Association and has held leadership positions in the American Bar Association (ABA) and the American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA).

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