As Patrick Arenz says, there are few jobs that can change another person’s life forever. But being a trial lawyer is one of those jobs.
Patrick Arenz is a trial lawyer with the firm Robins Kaplan, working on patent and copyright law. And he’s a pretty big deal for the intellectual property cases he’s handled. But I first ran into Patrick’s name in a very different place. It was the story of one of his clients – not a tech company or an internet startup, but a young Hmong woman who was suing her abuser.
What made this case unique, is that the abuse happened in Laos, and the man was a U.S. citizen who was participating in sex tourism. Never before had a victim of sex-tourism won a civil suit against an abuser until this case.
This story got international attention, but it wasn’t Patrick’s first pro bono case. Since he became an attorney, he’s been finding ways to help clients who would otherwise have no access to the legal system.
In 2018, he won the Pro Bono Publico Award, given to attorneys who have shown a remarkable dedication to the public good. Somehow, he’s been doing this work in-between the massive multi-million dollar patent and copyright law cases he runs.
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