Emily Kappers, Counsel at Crowell and Moring LLP, sits in Crowell’s intellectual property practice group and focuses her practice on all aspects of domestic and global brand protection, copyright, advertising, and unfair competition law. Building, protecting, and enforcing clients’ hard-earned rights in their intellectual property drives Emily’s practice. Emily represents a diverse range of clients, from a hotel group to a cooking equipment conglomerate, and she enjoys the intertwined nature of her work with her own and others’ daily life, as well as her work’s impact on her clients’ businesses.
Emily graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a dual degree in English and Communications and an unyielding love of the visual and musical arts. A violinist from an early age and aspiring artist for as long as she can remember, Emily sought a legal education focused on the protection of intellectual property, attending DePaul University College of Law. While at DePaul, Emily focused on all aspects of intellectual property, and was particularly drawn to trademark and copyright law. Both areas spoke to Emily’s passion for the creative, and lent a degree of flexibility to problem solving she enjoys to this day. Following Emily’s graduation from DePaul with honors, Emily joined a boutique intellectual property firm focused on trademark and advertising law before transitioning to her current firm.
Outside the office, Emily serves as an executive board member of Ravinia Festival’s—the “summer home of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra”—Auxiliary Board, where she focuses on fundraising and expanding music programs for underserved children throughout Chicagoland. Emily also serves on the executive board of the Richard Linn American Inn of Court, an organization dedicated to the advancement of professionalism, ethics and civility in the practice of intellectual property law, and as ChiWIP’s sponsorship committee co-chair. Emily finds inspiration in each of these organizations and, especially through her work with ChiWIP, has found women role models who lead with grace and grit and advocate for the successes of their more junior counterparts.
Emily has a love for Broadway musicals, passion for interior design, and a—currently unfulfilled—goal of experiencing every corner of the world. If she’s not in the office or at a board meeting, you may find her singing some showtunes (off-key), flipping through the most recent Architectural Digest, or planning her next adventure.
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