People

James Jenkins, III Managing Associate

Washington, D.C.

He represents a variety of market participants, including sponsors, issuers and underwriters, in public and private offerings of commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS). 

He joins Orrick from Troutman Pepper Hamilton Sanders in Washington, D.C. Prior to and during law school, James worked in the secondary market as a Performance Manager in the Credit Risk Management division at Freddie Mac, where he managed the performance of billions of dollars in MBS assets.  

Travis Jensen Partner

Silicon Valley

Able to quickly understand complex technology in the litigation context, Travis is particularly well-suited to resolve patent disputes involving semiconductor processes and circuits such as NAND flash memory, microcontrollers, wireless payment technologies, and related areas. After earning advanced degrees in electrical engineering, and before embarking on his legal career, Travis worked at Intel Corp. and co-founded a fabless semiconductor design company.

Travis has used his distinctive skillset to litigate technically complex patent cases to verdict, and obtain favorable settlements for several of the world’s leading technology companies such as Microchip, Synopsys, AT&T, and SanDisk. Travis has successfully first chaired patent and non-patent jury cases to verdict in federal and state court, including while on secondment to the San Francisco District Attorney's Office.  Travis has handled numerous appeals before the Federal Circuit, and, as a registered patent attorney, served as lead and back-up counsel in post-grant proceedings (inter partes review and ex parte reexamination) at the PTO.

Sten Jensen Senior Counsel

Washington, D.C.

Sten routinely guides clients such as FUJIFILM and Panasonic through the minefields of the ITC. Sten also has long-standing relationships with attorneys in the ITC’s Office of Unfair Import Investigations, developed when he served on the Executive Committee of the ITC Trial Lawyers' Association. Sten’s credibility with this group, combined with his thorough knowledge of the ITC’s speed and complexity, gives his clients a distinct advantage.

Sten has also represented clients in more than 50 federal patent cases, including cases in the top five venues for patent infringement filings. He has particular experience in Delaware, where he served as a judicial clerk for former District Court Judge Roderick McKelvie. Sten has defended numerous corporations against claims filed by aggressive patent trolls, and his cases have protected a wide range of technologies, including integrated circuits, semiconductors, optical disk drives, digital cameras, printers, and other consumer electronics products.

Sten has frequently lectured on intellectual property issues facing companies in the United States, Japan, and Taiwan. He is widely praised by clients for his dedication, knowledge, and skill in guiding them through discovery, merits, and settlement issues. Sten is listed as a recommended lawyer by The Legal 500 USA for patent litigation, and he is ranked by Chambers USA for IP Litigation with clients commenting that “he gave us great ideas and advice, and negotiated very hard for us.”

Rachael Jensen Managing Associate

Austin

Rachael has represented clients in multiple cases before the United States Supreme Court, as well as federal and state appellate courts across the country. She has argued before the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and the Army Court of Criminal Appeals.

Prior to joining Orrick, Rachael clerked for the Honorable Denny Chin of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. She graduated with Honors from The University of Texas School of Law, where she was champion in moot court, Chief Articles Editor for The Review of Litigation, a research assistant, a teaching assistant, and a member of the Supreme Court Clinic. She received her Bachelor’s degree from The University of Arkansas, where she developed her nationally recognized research on political rhetoric.

Molly Jergenson Managing Associate

San Francisco

She advises clients on a wide range of transactions in the energy industry with a particular focus on renewable energy, including project acquisition, debt and tax equity financing, and development of solar, wind, and storage projects. 

Mae Ji Managing Associate

New York

She is a native Korean speaker and is proficient in Japanese.

James Jirtle Partner

London

James's experience includes advising:

• Arrangers and managers on over 40 EUR CLOs.
• Issuers and investors in connection with the warehousing and securitisation of various assets, including trade receivables, consumer loans, telco receivables and physical commodities.
• Issuers, arrangers and investors on compliance with European securitisation regulation requirements.
• Borrowers on corporate bonds and private debt transactions.

Giji John Partner

Houston; Singapore

He has extensive experience representing project sponsors through development (including through the negotiation and drafting of power purchase agreements and other long-term offtake agreements, physical and financial swaps, engineering, procurement and construction contracts, operation and maintenance agreements, management services agreements and site services agreements), acquisitions and dispositions, joint ventures and financings. His representation has included transactions involving LNG facilities, methanol facilities, petrochemical refineries, carbon capture and sequestration facilities, natural gas processing and storage facilities, natural gas and CO2 pipelines, wind energy, solar energy, natural gas-fired peaking and combined-cycle power plants, thermal and battery energy storage, transportation, aviation and ports.

His prior experiences include a two year secondment to International Finance Corporation’s Office of General Counsel where he worked on multi-currency corporate financings, project financings and equity investments in infrastructure projects in Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, India, Mexico, Pakistan, Panama, the Philippines, Romania, Russia, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan and Turkey.

Giji is currently ranked as a Projects Leading Lawyer in Chambers Global and Chambers USA, and has been recognized for excellence by numerous leading industry and legal publications, including being named one of 34 "Groundbreaking lawyers" by Public Utilities Fortnightly.

Mark Johnson Of Counsel

London

Mark assists office holders across a broad range of asset recovery actions, including investigations into antecedent transactions and other claims against directors and third parties, as well as advising directors defending such claims. Mark has deep experience in enforcement work on behalf of banks and lenders including Law of Property Act receiverships.

Mark's non-contentious work includes significant experience on transactional matters such as assisting on both the buy and sell side of 'pre-pack' administration sales and other insolvency sales, advising on restructuring options for companies in distress including voluntary arrangements, schemes, and consensual restructuring proposals as well as advisory work assisting companies and their directors on the duties they have when facing financial difficulties.

Pamela Johnson Chief Inventory Management Officer

San Francisco

Previously, Pamela was the Chief Practice Officer for Orrick’s global Litigation and IP Business Units, comprised of over 400 lawyers.

She advised on the strategic planning, operation and management of the Business Units. Her responsibilities included oversight of the financial performance, business planning and execution, and lawyer recruiting. Pamela also oversaw the managing attorney's office, which includes the firm-wide court and calendaring functions.

Pamela brings to her position many years of experience in various law firm roles. She was formerly a commercial real estate lawyer at Steefel, Levitt and Weiss (now Manatt, Phelps & Phillips) and at Orrick. Her practice focused on the representation of institutional investors in the acquisition, disposition and financing of commercial and multifamily properties. Pamela has also served as Director of Business Development for various transactional and litigation practice groups at Orrick.

Thora Johnson Partner

Washington, D.C.

Thora works with medical device, pharmaceutical, biotech and digital health companies, helping them navigate the increasingly complex patchwork of state and federal health privacy laws. One client described her to the Legal 500 as a “very practical” advisor providing “exceptional guidance” on health information privacy and HIPAA compliance matters.

Her breadth and depth of experience enable Thora to assist clients in harnessing the power of artificial intelligence and executing data-sharing arrangements, all while protecting health data. As a result, Thora spends much of her time counseling pioneering startups and high-growth companies on responsible innovation in healthcare and life sciences.

Thora brings extensive experience counseling clients, including Fortune 500 companies and brick and mortar providers, on the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and other state and federal health privacy and regulatory compliance regimes including:

• Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology’s interoperability and information blocking regulations
• Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Service’s (CMS’s) interoperability and patient access regulations
• Part 2 confidentiality requirements applicable to substance abuse records
• State health information privacy laws
• State consumer privacy laws with special controls for health data
• Medicare/Medicaid compliance
• Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act (MHPAEA)
• Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA)
• Affordable Care Act (ACA) compliance
• Regulatory requirements of the Employer Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), the Internal Revenue Code, HIPAA, and the ACA as they apply to employer health and wellness plans

Thora routinely helps companies and large employers prepare for and respond to privacy and security incidents involving health information. She also defends clients in government investigations initiated by the OCR, OIG, DOJ, FTC and State AGs, among others.

Karen G. Johnson-McKewan Senior Counsel

San Francisco

Karen focuses on litigation that crosses the boundaries between traditional legal practices, and therefore requires inventive and strategic approaches. These solutions, tucked in the creases between law and industry, are why leading technology and Fortune 500 companies hire Karen to resolve their most complex litigation matters.

Over the past 36 years, Karen has first-chaired state and federal trials, and arbitrated more than a dozen disputes. She has managed intellectual property and commercial disputes for companies such as Oracle, NVIDIA, Netflix and VMWare.

In addition to her legal background, Karen’s relationship management skills give her clients a significant advantage. She knows how to pull together and lead the best team, from multiple disciplines within Orrick, and often involving multiple law firms. Able to unite what were, and will be, competing firms into a single powerful unit takes a special type of leadership, one which Karen has demonstrated time and again.