Katherine E.Perrelli

Kate is her clients’ first call when they face challenges with unfair competition, trade secret misappropriation, and other intellectual property theft, restrictive covenant litigation, complex commercial disputes, wrongful termination, and internal workplace misconduct and compliance complaints. Her services also include preparation of individual and multistate employer non-compete, nonsolicit, nondisclosure, and other restrictive covenant agreements; advice regarding onboarding of employees or groups of employees from a competitor, or departing employees joining a competitor; and preparation and implementation of trade secret protection programs, including trade secret audits.

In addition to representing her clients across the country on such matters in federal and state courts, arbitrations, and mediations, Kate is frequently retained to conduct complex and sensitive internal investigations concerning executives, workplace misconduct issues, and other internal complaints. She works with clients to address the situation through impartial fact finding while providing strategic guidance on minimizing harm and business impact. Based on her findings and the interests of the client, Kate offers strategic guidance on necessary steps to address the situation and protect the company going forward through proactive steps such as training, discipline, and necessary updates to policies and procedures.

Kate is the co-chair of the firm’s national Trade Secrets, Computer Fraud & Non-Competes group, and the Vice-Chair of the ABA Division IV - Specialized IP Law Division. Kate is the immediate past national chair of Seyfarth’ s Litigation department, has led a variety of litigation and business counseling practice areas, and has collaborated with other firm nonlitigation departments on client and industry initiatives. These various Seyfarth and industry leadership roles enhance her client service by giving her up-to-the-minute access to emerging legal trends, best practices, and benchmarking information, as well as a deep knowledge of firm and industry talent that can be tapped for certain client needs.

Kate has also studied and employed the most innovative techniques in the legal industry, including value-based pricing, process improvement, and project management and service delivery that affect the business side of many in-house legal departments.
Kate also has considerable experience in devising and managing alternative, value-based fee structures. She is a certified Six Sigma Green Belt and applies Lean Six Sigma and SeyfarthLean principles to her practice, counseling clients on process improvements, data analytics, and project management.