Kathryn Doi '85 Speaks at KHOP ‘Lunch with a Legend'
Kathryn Doi '85, a partner in the Healthcare Law Practice Team of Murphy Austin Adams Schoenfeld LLP, spoke to 34 participants in the King Hall Outreach Program (KHOP) at KHOP's "Lunch with a Legend" event on July 30. Doi spoke on her life experiences, offered career advice, and responded to several questions from the audience.
KHOP sponsors "Lunch with a Legend" as part of the program's intensive law school preparation. The event offers an opportunity for KHOP students, who are typically either "first generation" college students or members of a traditionally underrepresented group, to learn from the experiences of others who have overcome similar obstacles.
Doi's professional experiences include work in private practice for the firm that is now Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, clerking for a federal judge, serving the state of California as a Senior Deputy Legal Affairs Secretary in the Office of the Governor and Counsel to the Secretary of the Technology, Trade and Commerce Agency, as well as a position as Staff Counsel to the Commission on Judicial Performance.
Doi talked about her background and her time at King Hall as a student, and offered the students three specific pieces of advice: to "figure out what kind of lawyer" they might wish to become, to realize "life is really a job interview" and that the contacts you make in everyday interactions can lead to important career connections, and to "give thought to the life-work balance" in deciding which type of legal practice to pursue.
The KHOP participants appreciated Doi's reminiscences of the challenges she faced as a young mother trying to balance family life and legal practice and of her early years in the legal profession, when her identity as one of the few Asian American women caused her to feel "extra weight, an added responsibility" to prove herself. "But the world has changed quite a bit in the past 25 years, and for the better," she said.