Nobody ever doubted Sonal Mehta’s smarts. She graduated with honors from the University of California at Berkeley at just 17. She dazzled partners at Weil, Gotshal & Manges as a summer associate before she hit legal drinking age, and then won a prestigious clerkship for the country’s top patent judge before making partner herself at the tender age of 30.
Less certain was how well Mehta would thrive in her chosen niche: patent jury trials. Her mentors, including Weil partner Edward Reines and veteran IP judge Paul Michel, believed she could hack it. But fairly or unfairly, prodigies are sometimes thought to lack the confidence and judgment associated with effective trial lawyering. And in a patent litigation bar still dominated by graying white males, Mehta needed to break down some barriers as a young Indian-American woman.
