As Womble Bond Dickinson (US) LLP's Assistant General Counsel, Joann advises the firm on legal issues, including conflicts of interest, lateral hiring, personnel issues, risk management, legal ethics and professional responsibility. Joann leads the General Counsel’s Office’s functions around clearing and onboarding lateral partners. Joann also provides training on ethics and conflicts issues to firm attorneys.
Prior to becoming full-time counsel to the firm, Joann was an attorney with the Case Management Facility (CMF), a team that helps clients manage high-stakes, mass tort and multi-jurisdictional litigation. Joann provided a client’s perspective to the CMF due to her defense work for a Fortune 500 company and her work as a liaison attorney to major pharmaceutical clients and an energy and oil company.
Joann’s pro bono work focuses on advocating for the best interests of children in the appellate courts and in conjunction with Guardian ad Litem.
Joann is passionate about diversity, equity and inclusion, and has served on the firm’s Diversity and Inclusion Committee for many years.
Professional Activities
- American Bar Association
- North Carolina Bar Association
- Forsyth County Bar Association
- National Asian Pacific American Bar Association
Experience
Any result the lawyer or law firm may have achieved on behalf of clients in other matters does not necessarily indicate similar results can be obtained for other clients.
- Represented Merck & Co. in the VIOXX litigation, one of the largest mass torts in US history, with a key focus on managing FDA reporting requirements and other complex case strategy issues in the wide-scale multi-district and state-coordinated proceedings.
- Represented a global oil and energy company as national litigation management counsel in thousands of individual and class actions, including shareholder actions and government investigations arising out of one of the largest oil spills in history.
- Worked with Fortune 500 companies to develop a variety of custom legal knowledge management systems, including the integration of early case assessment (ECA) and identification of best practices for preserving clients’ business intelligence across legal portfolios.
- Represented a Fortune 500 manufacturing company in responding to complex written discovery and answer issues in national product liability litigation.
- Assisted clients in crafting document retention policies and procedures, including policies governing electronic documents.
