Malavika Lobo Joins GE

As a fellow at GE Digital in San Ramon, California, Lobo has gained experience and connections in corporate law and technology transactions.

On any given day as a Brackett Denniston Diversity Fellow at General Electric (GE), Malavika Lobo (’17) could be working on nondisclosure agreements for the company’s intellectual property team, drafting third party licensing agreements for the commercial team, or managing alternative dispute resolutions for the employment team. “It’s been a really good match,” she says, “I take assignments as they come and get a feel for a bunch of different areas of the law.”

Lobo enrolled at Boston University School of Law with an interest in studying intellectual property law. She graduated from the University of California at Berkeley with an undergraduate degree in molecular biology and had worked in a research lab for a few years before a friend of her parents suggested law school and IP law. “I was a little nervous about going [to BU Law], because I’d never lived outside of California,” she says, “but it’s a really good school, the IP program is great and the faculty is great and so I thought that this would be a really good place for me.”

Named for Brackett B. Denniston III, a former senior vice president and general counsel for GE, the yearlong fellowship provides opportunities for new attorneys from groups traditionally underrepresented in the legal profession to gain on-the-ground experience. The program trains new attorneys, helps them make connections inside the company, and gives them the opportunity to network with outside firms with which GE does business. The fellowship helped Lobo earn a position as an associate at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, which she will begin in May.

Lobo knew she wanted to apply for the fellowship as soon as she noticed it on the Career Development & Public Service Office’s jobs portal. She wanted to return to California after graduation and was looking for positions that would help her gain experience and make connections in that area of the country. Within a few hours of flagging the job post, she received an email from her career advisor, who wanted to make sure she had seen it. Together, they worked on polishing her resume and cover letter so she could apply.

At GE Digital in San Ramon, California, Lobo has been exposed to software-based technology and made use of her technical background and the legal skills acquired at BU Law. “One of the things you learn in law school is how… to pull out the information you need in different situations,” she says. “I don’t do a lot of research and writing in my work, but I remember the case law and where the law stands.”

While at BU Law, Lobo focused her class schedule and summer jobs on law related to science and technology. Courses like Copyright Law with William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor Wendy Gordon, Intellectual Property and the Internet with Professor Stacey Dogan, and Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Law with Professor Emeritus Fran Miller expanded her perspective on copyright, privacy issues, and interactions between technology and regulatory bodies.

In addition to the coursework, opportunities for experiential learning shaped the way Lobo approached the rest of her time in law school and the career path she wanted to follow. In her 2L year, she completed an externship with MPM Capital, a venture capital firm that funds life sciences companies. “I learned a lot about how to market a new company and the way to help new companies grow,” she says, “and there was a lot of client interaction, which I loved.”

That summer, she participated in the Entrepreneurship & IP Clinic helping MIT students develop their ideas into businesses. One of the projects she worked on illustrated for her the importance of this area of the law: A client initially requested assistance with drafting the terms and services for a music-based app, but during the intake meeting it became clear that the way the client intended to source the music might expose the client to copyright issues. “It was one of those moments where the clients don’t know what they don’t know,” Lobo says. “And our job as their lawyers is to figure out what’s going on so they don’t get into trouble down the line.”

The experiences helped reshape her career path, and she began thinking more about the intersection of business and intellectual property law. “I really liked [working with the MIT student entrepreneurs] and wanted to practice somewhere where I could work with technology companies and help them grow their businesses,” she says.

As her time as a Denniston fellow comes to an end, Lobo is grateful for the experience, which has reinforced her decision to focus on corporate law and technology transactions and helped her create the connections to earn the position with Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. Thinking back to her work in the Entrepreneurship & IP Clinic, she recalls her favorite part of the experience was learning about what the student entrepreneurs were doing. “The technology was so clever and creative, and they had so many great ideas to implement, they just needed help building the business,” she says. “At the end of the day, it’s nice to be helping people make their dreams come true.”