Kate G. McKenney

Kate McKenney, a counsel in the firm’s Complex Litigation & Dispute Resolution department, focuses her practice on representing companies and their officers and directors in class action litigation, particularly in securities, ERISA, data breach, data privacy, and consumer class actions. Kate serves clients across many industries, including financial services, life sciences, biotechnology, medical device, and technology. Kate also has significant experience in fiduciary duty and corporate governance matters, post-closing disputes, and investigations by various government and regulatory entities including the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the U.S. Department of Justice, and the U.S. Department of Labor. 

Kate works with clients at all phases of litigation, advising clients on disclosure-related issues, litigation risk mitigation measures and discovery, and she has successfully negotiated many class action and other settlements on behalf of Goodwin’s clients.

• Representation of dozens of public companies and their officers and directors in federal securities class actions and related shareholder derivative actions, particularly life sciences and biotechnology companies who are in the process of seeking FDA approval of their products. Many of these cases received complete dismissal at the motion to dismiss stage
• Representation of plan sponsors in ERISA class actions alleging that investment options in 401(k) plans had excessive fees and/or poor performance. These include several actions challenging mutual fund companies’ use of their own products as investment options in their retirement plans. Kate represented one such company at trial, resulting in a complete defense verdict
• Representation of software companies in data breach class actions
• Representation of public and private companies, as well as their officers and directors, in SEC investigations

Kate is a member of the Boston Bar Association, Massachusetts Bar Association and American Bar Association.

Prior to joining Goodwin in 2008, Kate was an associate in the Boston office of Bingham McCutchen.