Washington Lawyer March/April 2026
By Sarah Kellogg
Karen L. Dunn acknowledges that her career has not followed a tidy path from law school to partnership. Instead, her professional story arcs across high-stakes politics, federal prosecution, landmark civil justice battles, and — most recently — the launch of a rapidly rising boutique firm.
Dunn’s professional life has been defined by adroitly seized opportunities and timely reinvention. Her list of former employers reads like a who’s who of the last quarter-century in politics and law, underscoring how often she has found herself at the center of pivotal national events. “My career has been nonlinear,” notes Dunn, a founding partner at Dunn Isaacson Rhee LLP who credits her circuitous path to both serendipity and her curious nature.
Two decades into practice, Dunn is still motivated by the demands and possibilities of the legal profession. She remains convinced that the law retains extraordinary potential, despite broader societal uncertainty, and that lawyers and law firms have a responsibility to meet the moment.
“Having a job where you can work on hard problems is helpful at this time in particular,” Dunn says. “It gives you a sense of purpose. The legal system has a unique ability to make progress for people. It is a good time to be a lawyer.”
From Communications to Law
Initially a legal career was not Dunn’s goal, particularly after working at her mother’s law firm in high school and concluding that the law — or at least the tasks she was given — were “boring.”
After graduating from Brown University, Dunn worked briefly in television before joining U.S. Representative Nita Lowey’s office as press secretary and legislative correspondent. There, she entered an informal apprenticeship under Howard Wolfson, Lowey’s chief of staff at the time. “I would write the mail, and in exchange Howard would teach me how to be a press secretary,” she recalls. That arrangement led to a role in former First Lady Hillary Clinton’s 2000 U.S. Senate campaign and, after Clinton’s victory, to positions as her Senate press secretary and later communications director.
The work was meaningful and intense, shaped by the post-9/11 climate and government policymaking. But even as she advanced in the world of political communications, Dunn found herself contemplating a new direction. “I didn’t know whether I wanted to be in communications forever,” she says. “Life is long.”
Drawn to federal prosecution, Dunn left Capitol Hill in 2003 to attend Yale Law School. It proved a decision that would anchor the next chapter of her career. After clerking for Judge Merrick B. Garland on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and Justice Stephen Breyer on the U.S. Supreme Court, Dunn became an assistant U.S. attorney (AUSA) in the Eastern District of Virginia, known for its fast-paced trial docket. Dunn thrived there. “I worked really hard to try as many cases as possible,” she says. “I loved trying cases.”
In 2012, while pregnant with her second child, Dunn was asked to assist with President Barack Obama’s debate preparation for his reelection campaign. “It was an offer I could not refuse,” she says. Leaving her AUSA role, Dunn helped prepare Obama for nationally televised debates and concluded the campaign just weeks before giving birth. Dunn did the same for Hillary Clinton and former Vice President Kamala Harris during their respective campaigns.
A Justice Department hiring freeze prevented her return to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, redirecting her to private practice at Boies Schiller Flexner LLP in 2014. There, she quickly earned a reputation for exceptional trial work and forged partnerships that would later prove pivotal. After six years, she joined Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP as a partner and served as cochair of the firm’s litigation department.
Dunn’s time in private practice brought a series of high-profile, high-stakes cases that catapulted her to the top of the trial bar in the United States, making her a go-to advocate for some of the thorniest corporate and civil justice matters in the country. Among them was Sines v. Kessler, which arose from the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Dunn helped secure a jury verdict that held white supremacist organizers liable for the injuries to the counter-protestors and for conspiring under state law to commit racially motivated violence.
“Once we brought the litigation, we knew it wasn’t a case you could settle,” Dunn says, noting that the jury’s decision gave the verdict particular weight. “It makes the outcome even more meaningful that it was a group of laypeople saying this is not permissible under the laws of our country,” says Dunn.
In Council of the District of Columbia v. Mayor Vincent Gray, Dunn worked pro bono to guide a contentious two-year battle through local and federal courts, eventually securing budget autonomy for the District in 2016. D.C. Superior Court upheld a voter-approved referendum and granted the city the authority to use its own revenue from fees and taxes without congressional approval.
In the closely watched Waymo LLC v. Uber Technologies, Inc. trade secrets trial in 2017, Dunn and her team brought the case to the edge of a verdict, prompting a favorable settlement for Uber after only four days of testimony, including crucial evidence from Travis Kalanick, Uber’s cofounder and chief executive officer at the time.
Starting a New Chapter
In May 2025, two months after Paul, Weiss agreed to provide $40 million in pro bono work supporting White House priorities and adopt merit-based hiring commitments in exchange for the Trump administration rescinding an executive order against the firm, Dunn left and founded her own firm.
Dunn was joined in the new venture by fellow trial lawyers William A. Isaacson — whose partnership with Dunn dates back to their first case together in 2014 — and Jeannie R. Rhee — a colleague from Dunn’s years on Capitol Hill and a former member of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigative team.
“We made the decision that was best for us, and we wish our former colleagues the best,” says Dunn.
Even though the boutique firm Dunn Isaacson Rhee is still in its infancy, it has already attracted big-name clients in the corporate and civil justice litigation world. Dunn chalks up the early success of the firm to the relationships that form its foundation. “We worked really well together. We were very complementary,” Dunn says. “When you have a small firm, the level of excellence has to be very, very high across the board. Everybody needs to be at the top.”
Dunn describes, only partly in metaphor, the 30-lawyer firm as a “legal SWAT team.” “When you find people to work with whom you can trust implicitly, that’s crucial,” she says. “There’s no drama, and we can descend on the problem and go to work.”
Support from other boutique firm founders also proved invaluable in the last year. “I can’t even tell you how grateful I have been to other founders who said, ‘What do you need? How can I help you?’ It was really overwhelming and extremely helpful,” Dunn says.
In recent years, Dunn has earned a reputation as a trusted counselor to executives and government leaders navigating complex and highly public challenges. She coached Amazon’s then-CEO Jeff Bezos prior to his 2020 testimony before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee on antitrust issues, and prepared UnitedHealth Group’s then-CEO Andrew Witty for congressional hearings in 2024 following a major company data breach.
Dunn’s work has earned her The American Lawyer’s Litigator of the Year distinction in 2017 and “star” rankings from Chambers and Partners. Adding to her numerous national awards and recognitions, Dunn received Legal Aid DC’s Servant of Justice Award in 2025 for her pro bono advocacy and public service contributions. They are efforts that Dunn describes as foundational to her firm’s identity. “It’s our view that social impact cases are part of what the profession requires,” she says. “We resource them the same way [as commercial cases].”
Her personal life is no less busy than work. Dunn is married with three children — aged 15, 13, and 10. In one memorable instance of professional–personal overlap, she and her husband served as co-counsel on the D.C. budget autonomy case. It’s an experience that she jokes “was a test” that they both passed.
Nonlinear careers do not always reveal their logic in the moment. But looking back on her trajectory — from press secretary to federal prosecutor to civil rights litigator to nationally recognized trial advocate to cofounder of a thriving boutique firm — Dunn believes the through line is a commitment to public service, to the craft of trial work, and to tackling difficult legal issues with rigor. “It gives you purpose,” she says.
Sarah Kellogg is a Washington, D.C., freelance writer who has written for Washington Lawyer for two decades.
