BRIEFS
RISING STARS
THE RIGHT TRACK AND THEN THERE WAS ONE
Dana Herberholz has always loved
two things: science and writing. As an
intellectual property litigator at Zarian
Midgley & Johnson in Boise, he’s found a way
to blend his interests, but it took some time
before he realized law was a natural fit.
Growing up in Spokane, Wash., he had
a different path in mind. “It had always
been sort of a dream of mine to become
a race car driver,” recalls Herberholz, who
started racing stock cars when he was
15. “But, realistically, knowing that the
odds of me being a professional at any
sport were very low, I took school pretty
seriously and wanted to make sure that
education was my priority.” He enrolled
at the University of Washington to study
molecular biology with plans on becoming
a doctor. Then, his roommate invited him
to a student senate meeting.
“I was fascinated by it,” says Herberholz,
now 31, who became a student senator,
giving him the chance to draft and defend
legislation. “I enjoyed the technical side
of [my biology degree], I enjoyed learning
the subject matter … but there’s not a lot
to argue about when it comes to the Krebs
cycle or amino acid sequences,” he says,
chuckling. “So I really enjoyed the chance to
write, to argue.”
He finished up his cellular and
molecular biology degree—as well as
a bachelor of arts in law, societies and
justice—and went on to graduate from
Gonzaga University School of Law in 2006.
Herberholz always knew his technical
background would be a great lead-in to
IP—specifically patent litigation—and
that’s exactly what happened.
His practice today focuses on
representing national and international
companies in patent cases all over the
While Kelly J.C. Gallinger’s life has been
defined by her impulse for what she calls “crazy
whims”—including joining the Army at 17 and
moving to a slum in South Korea after college—
becoming a lawyer was not one of them.
Growing up in the mountains near Helena, she
met in the pages of her favorite crime novels
characters who inspired her to pursue law.
“I loved Agatha Christie; she’s still one of
my favorite authors, and she’d always have
solicitors and barristers in her novels,” says
Gallinger. “So originally I thought criminal law
was pretty darn interesting.”
Her talents led her that way as well. “I like
to say I was only good at arguing,” she says.
“So there were not many options open to me,
career choicewise.”
Her knack for arguing came in handy when,
at 17, she decided she was ready to go out on
her own. “I promptly joined the Army—to prove
that I was not too young to leave and that I
could do it in a really tough environment,” she
says. While on active duty, she earned a political
science degree at Montana State University,
and then studied for the LSAT, which the Army
would pay for—eventually.
“I was all ready to take it on a Saturday, and
Friday night the education officer called me
and said, ‘I forgot to mail the paperwork back
to Washington and you’re not authorized to
take this test,’” says Gallinger. By the time she
was approved to take the LSATs, law school
application deadlines had passed. Suddenly,
Gallinger had a year on her hands. “I looked
around for jobs that I could get with a political
science degree and there wasn’t much. So I
thought, ‘What the heck, I’ll go see Asia.’”
Gallinger answered a newspaper ad placed
by a private language school, known in Korea
as a “hagwon,” seeking English teachers, and
flew to Pusan, South Korea, to teach English
as a second language to Korean adults. She
arrived in the city of more than 3. 5 million amid
DANA HERBERHOLZ’S INTEREST IN
SCIENCE MAKES HIM A PERFECT MATCH
FOR IP LAW BY BETSY GRACA
A TALENT FOR ARGUMENT—ALONG WITH AGATHA CHRISTIE—BROUGHT
KELLY J.C. GALLINGER TO THE LAW BY ADRIENNE SCHOFHAUSER
the chaos of 1998, “when the Asian markets
crashed horribly and IMF [International
Monetary Fund] came to bail everybody out,”
she says. She lived in a slum where rats ran
through the ceilings. In the streets, her blond
hair, an unusual sight, was often tugged at
by locals. “I always thought, ‘ You know, I’ve
got a return ticket, I can catch a cab to the
airport and leave at any time and go back to
my normal life, but my neighbors couldn’t,’”
Gallinger says. So she hung in there, enjoying
other aspects. “A lot of my students became
[my] really great friends,” she says.
Gallinger returned home a year later and
graduated from the University of Montana
School of Law. In 2002, she joined Brown Law
Firm in Billings, where she’s now a partner.
Gallinger’s practice has evolved to focus
on insurance coverage issues and bad faith
defense, with a dabbling of defense litigation.
She didn’t anticipate the insurance side, but
enjoys its academic appeal. “You’re hired by
the insurance company to figure out whether
there’s coverage under a particular policy for a
claim,” she says. “It’s like a puzzle. You’re given
a set of facts and you have to look through the
policy for any weaknesses or ambiguities.”
Her work handling some obscure cases
means that she also gets to become an expert
on everything from selective water withdrawal
systems relating to hydroelectric dams, to
explosive hair dryers to bacterial meningitis.
“We had the most interesting expert on that
case,” she says of the latter. It was an insurance
defense case and her client, a teacher, was sued
by a student who contracted the disease on
their class trip to Spain. “We [found] this guy
who developed the bacterial meningitis vaccine
back in the ‘60s,” she says. Gallinger had him
explain that the teacher shouldn’t have been
responsible for the girl’s injuries because of the
incredible speed at which the disease comes
on. The case settled quietly to the appreciation
of the small-town teacher, she says.
“Between the Army, law school and my legal
career, I’ve become very organized and goal-
oriented,” says Gallinger. “Before, I was all over
the map; I’d just have a whim and go do it.”
But her arguing skills remain intact. Her
husband’s also an attorney. “That makes for
an interesting marriage,” she says, then smiles.
“We argue all the time … in good nature.”
