It is with great sorrow that we bid farewell to Karen Brennan, who is moving on to greener in-house pastures, as Corporate IP Counsel with United Health Group. Having said that, we fully recognize it is a wonderful and significant opportunity for Karen, so we wish her the very best in her new position.

We will miss Karen’s significant accomplishments and contributions to our group over the years, and I’m sure readers will miss the smart, interesting and clever DuetsBlog posts we have all come to expect from Karen over the last two years.

Here are a few of my personal favorites from Karen:

We remain hopeful that our farewell to Karen is only temporary and partial, at least as a contributing author on DuetsBlog, since we have asked and Karen is hoping to appear as a guest blogger from time to time, when time and other kinds of important things permit.

So that Karen’s clever DuetsBlog bio is not lost into cyberspace as we transfer her likeness and posts from the sidebar and move them to the guest blogger tag, we have reproduced her original bio below the jump.

As one of the newest members of the Intellectual Property practice group (maybe not the youngest), I decided to go to law school after working as a paralegal for five years. Growing up in a small town in Iowa, my career path was profoundly focused at a young age – I was going to be either the President or, if that didn’t work out, a Dallas Cowboy cheerleader. Thankfully, neither panned out, but I unknowingly embarked upon my legal profession at around the same time. My first client? My older sister. "Re – tain -er!" Sent from the basement to take up all causes great and small with Mom and Dad, my results were mixed, but I discovered that they would be wrong about one thing – they said talking back wouldn’t get me anywhere. Turns out, anywhere but law school. A typical Type A, my hobbies (perhaps obsessions) include running, tennis and attempting to travel the world, including climbing as many mountains as possible, as long as there is a spa day at the end of the trip.

Karen, thanks for the wonderful memories! Please don’t be a stranger.