Practices

• Corporate Law

Biography

Barbara has an intimate understanding of the challenges facing in-house lawyers: she spent nearly 20 years at the North American operations of a Japanese auto manufacturer. One of the company’s Assistant General Counsel, she was responsible for a wide range of legal and business matters, including corporate and related transactions, and labor and employment issues.

Barbara’s corporate experience spans the full scope of business and strategic advice that companies of all sizes regularly need, from mergers and acquisitions, to vendor outsourcing and partnership agreements, corporate counseling and more. While in-house, she led complex transactions while providing contract review, negotiation and drafting support to a diverse client base (including the marketing, IT, finance, research, facilities, transportation and motorsports departments). More recently, she regularly assists clients with general contract review and negotiation.

Her work also encompasses a significant number of day-to-day employment matters, including advising HR professionals in hiring, counseling and termination of employees; preparation of employee handbooks and policies; handling of pre-litigation employment matters and mediations and settlements of employee claims.

Barbara regularly advises clients on a variety of issues pertaining to intellectual property (trademarks and copyrights), privacy, vendor bankruptcy, real estate, export controls, business-to-business litigation, and environmental and corporate compliance matters (such as records retention, annual audits report and employee training).

Barbara provides a valuable perspective for companies across the automotive industry, from global multinationals to regional and national firms to small businesses and start-ups. She knows the sector, the players, and the challenges they face in today’s ever-more competitive environment.