Ruchika Agrawal is a litigation associate focusing on intellectual property matters, including patent, copyright, and trade secret litigation for high-stakes technology clients. She has experience in a broad range of technical industries, including software, wireless communications, and semiconductors. Ms. Agrawal is also committed to pro bono work and just recently received the Wiley W. Manuel Award for Pro Bono Legal Services from the State Bar of California "for voluntary provision of legal services to the poor."
Ms. Agrawal received her J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law in 2006, where she served on the Editorial Board and Submissions Review Board for the Virginia Journal of International Law and as the President of the Virginia Society of Law & Technology. While in law school, Ms. Agrawal worked with Professor Lawrence Lessig of Stanford Law School (at the time) to research and co-author materials on a variety of technology-related legal and public policy issues. She also authored papers on network neutrality and the patent-antitrust entanglement under the advisement of former Federal Communications Commission Commissioner Glen Robinson.
Prior to law school, Ms. Agrawal worked at the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) in Washington, D.C., to focus on public policy technology-oriented issues such as privacy. While at EPIC, she worked with the Federal Trade Commission regarding online consumer protection and prevention of cross-border fraud; worked with the European Commission on privacy enhancing technologies; and served on ICANN's WHOIS task force as a public interest representative.
Ms. Agrawal received her masters degree in computer science from Stanford University in 2002, where she specialized in systems. At Stanford, she published in the Communications of the ACM under the advisement of Dr. Barbara Simons.
Ms. Agrawal has also worked professionally in both the financial and the pharmaceutical industries, including JP Morgan and Merck & Co., Inc., and she has experience consulting for other financial and pharmaceutical giants.
In 1999 Ms. Agrawal earned her bachelor of science, summa cum laude, in computer science and philosophy from Rutgers University. She completed her Henry Rutgers Thesis on resolving ambiguity in natural language processing. As one of her proudest achievements, Ms. Agrawal initiated, coordinated, and instituted a volunteer tutoring organization, which still serves the Rutgers community today.