BRIEFS
RISING STARS
ANN CATHCART CHAPLIN
HOW A 38-YEAR-OLD IS LEADING FISH & RICHARDSON’S LITIGATION PRACTICE GROUP BY BETSY GRACA
When Ann Cathcart Chaplin is cheering
on one of her three sons at a Little League
game or at home cooking a family meal,
she appears like any other mom. She’s
not. When this mom reaches for a jug of
milk from the refrigerator, she pauses for
a moment, thinking about the procedure
for making polyethylene and the trade
secret case she successfully settled for
global giant Chevron Phillips Chemical Co.
Her roles as both mom and intellectual
property attorney aren’t mutually exclusive.
It’s clear the managing principal of Fish
& Richardson’s Twin Cities office cares
deeply about her clients, their work and
her colleagues. Her devotion hasn’t gone
unnoticed by the firm either: In March,
Chaplin, now 38, was appointed as the
leader of the litigation practice group for
Fish & Richardson. The new role calls
for overseeing nearly 200 attorneys in 11
offices worldwide.
Chaplin, from Marine on St. Croix
(just north of Stillwater), who joined
Fish & Richardson in 2001, has loved
solving problems and helping people
for as long as she can remember; that
blend of compassion, collaboration and
enthusiasm has proven successful when
representing clients like 3M, Google and
Auburn University.
As a Harvard law student, Chaplin
had planned to use her skills practicing
criminal law. However, a summer working
for the Stillwater public defender’s office
where she represented clients arrested
the previous night, became a reality check.
“It takes special people to do that,” she
says. “I mother everyone so I worried about
them and I cared about them, and it broke
my heart because they kept coming back
every week and it was very frustrating. And
I thought, ‘If I’m this frustrated now from
that short period of time, how would I ever
do it for a long period of time?’”
The following summer she found
her niche in IP law while working as an
associate at Robins, Kaplan, Miller &
Ciresi. Chaplin, today one of just a few IP
attorneys without a technical background,
has no problem delving in and learning
the complex issues surrounding patents
and technology. “I just love the variety of it
because I always have to learn something
Super Bow Ties. Superb Attorneys.
