Celebrating 150 Years of Women Lawyers

I’m Alison Wisniewski, chief legal officer at Epiq.

Growing up in Westchester, just outside of New York City, I never imagined I would become an attorney.  In fact, I loved being on stage and started performing in shows at the age of 5.  Although my dad was a patent attorney,  I was never going to be a lawyer - I was going to be an actress.

I went to college at Northwestern University in Illinois. After graduation, I began working as a paralegal at a law firm.  This was a role I really enjoyed because it challenged me and I enjoyed learning new areas I had not yet explored in my academic life.  And, this experience really helped me confirm that a legal career was right for me so I continued down that path at Fordham University School of Law.

After working at a couple of law firms in their corporate departments, I joined Epiq as corporate counsel. If I could sum up my experience at Epiq in one word, it would be “Opportunity”.  I started out at Epiq  spending most of my time on client contracts and vendor agreements for the various business units.  At the time, Epiq was a much smaller organization.  But as it grew, I was able to grow my practice, having the opportunity to take on increasingly more complicated legal assignments including M&A transactions, corporate compliance initiatives, international company formations and corporate governance work.

We saw the company grow by number of employees and expand across geographic borders, we saw new product and service lines come to life and that growth led to new career opportunities for many, both internally and externally.  We’ve seen data privacy and data protection requirements and regulations become more stringent in recent years, especially with the implementation of GDPR, and that trend will only continue.

All of these trends and developments have created opportunity for me and my role as chief legal officer has never been more challenging and rewarding.  And, although not everyone has the exact same career path as me, my experience has some things in common with many others at Epiq. It’s really part of our core mission to ensure that our diverse team has the opportunity to grow and develop at Epiq.

Our team is made up of people who come from different backgrounds and bring different talents to Epiq and it really is core to my role to reinforce a culture of inclusion and to create opportunities for growth and development for our employees.  That’s a really rewarding part of my job.

As an attorney, I’m excited that we are investing in innovation in the legal industry and are delivering world class service to our clients.  As a member of the executive leadership team, and as a woman who has had an opportunity to grow and advance my career, I’m proud that we are committed to championing opportunity, inclusion, and development for our team at Epiq.