“It was like being struck by lightning,” Doris Johnson Hines remembers. She had just been offered a clerkship by one of the coauthors of the 1952 Patent Act—a judge widely regarded as the father of modern patent law. The year was 1993, and she had a job she loved at the firm of Finnegan, LLP, but Dori knew it was an opportunity she’d never get again. With that, she accepted and spent the next several years working for a trailblazer.
One might imagine it was from this clerkship that Dori cultivated her own abilities as a leader, but in truth, she had found herself leading the forefront of change before. In her upper level electrical engineering classes at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), she was often the only woman in the class. Later, she would become the first woman at Finnegan to make partner in the largest group of the firm. It wasn’t long before Dori became head of the firm’s litigation section, and under her leadership, it won American Lawyer‘s biennial award for Best IP Litigation Department in 2012.
Winning the award was about more than the firm’s practice of excellence, however. At the award dinner in New York City, Dori and her team were seated at a table with the man who had been charged with interviewing them, assessing their candidacy, and summing them up in a profile article. “He told us that one of the things that really struck him about the interview was how we were genuinely nice people—people he’d want to practice law with,” she remembers. “It was incredibly gratifying to win and to be profiled in an article in the publication, but to hear the comments about our character made it even better. So much of the ‘why’ I do what I do is people-oriented, and we’re really a firm that enjoys working together and working with our clients.”
Ever since her childhood growing up on the south shore of Long Island, Dori’s life has been not about defining moments, but about defining people. Her father worked as a repairman for the New York Telephone Company, while her mother stayed home with her two older children and the twins, Dori and Danny. Both parents impressed upon them the value of hard work in everything they did. “Dad often worked overtime and weekends so we didn’t have to want for anything, and mom was a constant presence,” Dori reflects. “She taught us how important it was to do things the right way, without cutting corners, and she could always say down to the penny how much money was in their checkbook. She managed with a lot less than a lot of other people, and she did it successfully.”
As a girl, Dori had a genuine love of academics that left her crying herself to sleep after the last day of first grade, simply because it was summer and she wouldn’t be able to go to school the next day. “I was really blessed to have some fantastic teachers along the way that made me want to go and do well,” she says.
Dori’s natural inclination toward education was augmented by a freedom to wander outside of school that has largely become extinct today. “In our neighborhood, parents sent their kids out to play and to come home at dark,” she remembers. “You rode your bike everywhere—it was idyllic, really. We didn’t have the boundaries that kids have now.” The family lived several blocks from a beach club, and though women’s presence in sports did not have the foothold then that it does now, Dori relished her time on the swim team in the summers.
Along with school and play, Dori’s character was also strengthened through work and early lessons in fiscal restraint. As a girl, she had a paper route and would deliver the news by bike, and she babysat routinely. When she turned 16, she got a job in the supermarket across the street, delighting in the additional responsibility and saving up enough money to eventually cover the last two years of her college career.
Dori had always had a natural affinity for math, science, and problem solving, but she hadn’t considered applying to RPI until she and Danny were filling out applications at the kitchen table together. “So much happens through serendipity,” she laughs. “He had an application for the program but decided he didn’t want to go there, so he handed it over to me.”
Having never had the opportunity to earn college diplomas themselves, Dori’s parents were insistent that their children pursue degrees with clear links to marketable job skills, and RPI fit the bill. Though she could have opted for a public school that would allow her to graduate debt-free, she felt it would give her better options and opted to enroll. After taking several classes in computer science, a cutting edge field at the time, she transitioned over to electrical engineering, which felt like a better fit.
By her junior year, however, she felt that something was missing. With that, she decided to enroll in several writing courses, which strengthened her writing skills while also allowing her to escape the male-dominated world of electrical engineering for a few hours each week. “My professor, Annette, was interested in students as people, and always encouraged us to try something different,” Dori recalls. “In some subtle way, she’s the one who first opened my eyes to the possibility of law. I was studying such a narrow, focused, specific, and technical field at that time, and my classes with her were crucial because they brought me back up for air and compelled me to look at things from a broader perspective.”
As she finished up her studies at RPI, Dori began interviewing for jobs, but nothing really clicked until she serendipitously received a postcard in the mail, announcing that the patent office in Washington was hiring. After her classes with Annette, she felt she wanted to channel her finely honed problem solving abilities away from engineering and toward law, which would allow her to interact more directly with people. The federal patent office would be a fine place to test the waters and see if she liked the subject matter, so Dori called the phone number to get an application, had a phone interview, and was offered the job. With that, she hopped in the new car she had just bought with her own hard-earned money and headed to D.C.
After working in that capacity for a year, Dori knew law was the right field for her. She took the LSAT, applied to law school, and enrolled in a four-year night program at George Washington University in 1987. She continued working in the patent office until 1990, when she took her first job with Finnegan, and her willingness to work while going to school allowed her to complete her degree without taking out any additional loans.
Dori married her husband, Rod, in 1993, just before she began the clerkship at the federal circuit appeals court. Prior to the court’s establishment in 1982, there was tremendous variation across America in how patent cases were handled, and people could essentially shop by region of the country,” Dori explains. “To ameliorate that problem, Congress created this special court and gave it jurisdiction over patent, veteran, and tax case appeals.”
After a tremendously enriching experience there, Dori returned to Finnegan in 1996 and began in patent prosecution, helping clients receive patents from the patent office. When she worked in litigation for the first time, however, she felt an immediate affinity for the practice. In that capacity, she had the opportunity to observe Steve Rosenman, a partner at the firm with incredible passion and dexterity. “I was so impressed by how much he enjoyed what he was doing, and by how good he was at it,” she remembers. “I knew I wanted to stay right there and do it too.”
Dori then had the opportunity to work with a partner by the name of Liam O’Grady, now a Virginia district court judge. “I was so inspired by the way he solved problems and crafted arguments,” she says. “He also went about teaching in a very effective, hands-off manner, giving opportunities and guiding without being forceful. From him, I learned that I wanted to be an advocate.”
Founded in 1965, Finnegan remains a specialty firm dedicated solely to intellectual property law, with a team of around 400 attorneys spread amongst its D.C., Palo Alto, Atlanta, Boston, Shanghai, Taipei, and Tokyo offices. “While most IP-only firms have merged with other practices in the past decade, ours has not, and has never wanted to,” Dori affirms. “We do one thing, and we do it with excellence. We can handle cases big and small because we have such a deep bench of technical expertise.”
Today, 60 percent of the firm’s practice is geared toward litigation, where Dori’s work is now focused. The remaining 40 percent is comprised of noncontentious work like obtaining patents and trademarks or doing opinions and due diligence. Dori’s group focuses on electrical and computer-related cases, which entails semiconductor and communications work. The firm also has chemical, pharmacological, and mechanical groups, with substantial overlap between the sections that led Dori to represent the patent holder for technology used in a groundbreaking hemophilia drug. “That case ended up going to arbitration, and we successfully argued it,” she says. “It was one of the most interesting cases to work on because it was so far outside the field I usually practice in. It seemed foreign at first, but really, it was a matter of not being afraid to learn the vocabulary and the technology, so I did it, and loved it.”
Dori made partner in 2000, and as such, was given the autonomy to develop her own practice—a responsibility she has shouldered with proficiency and grace, thanks to the careful honing of her craft. “As I was coming up, I tried to work with as many different people as possible so I could learn from them,” she avows. “I’d knock on people’s doors to see if they had anything I could work on, and I’d get feedback from as many people as possible. I wanted to get real breadth of experience, see what I liked, learn what worked for me, and incorporate that into my own practice.”
Fortunately, Finnegan is structured to foster an atmosphere in which this style of collaborative growth is truly celebrated. Profits aren’t allocated by the work each partner brings in, so partners feel free to call each other if they think someone else’s expertise could benefit a case. “It’s one fundamental reason our firm has been so successful, and why we’re able to engender such positive interpersonal relationships,” Dori says.
In advising young people entering the business world today, Dori acknowledges that college graduates are often required to make professional decisions divorced from the reality of what those decisions will look like. “As such, don’t be afraid to completely change course if you get a couple years of experience and feel that a different path is right for you.” Dori’s watched her older brother do just that, graduating from Marine Academy and working on ships for years before deciding to go back to school to become a history professor. “It takes courage to make a choice like that, but it’s important,” she affirms.
Equally as important is taking the time to give back. Through Finnegan, Dori does pro bono work for veterans and sits on the board of the National Veterans Legal Services Project. Under the Equal Access to Justice Act, the federal government covers the payment of attorney fees for successful veterans cases, and Finnegan donates those fees to veterans charities, making it one of the top five highest charitable donors in D.C.
Just as Dori hoped when she switched from engineering to law, her profession has allowed her to connect with people and truly serve them in ways that are as genuine as they are critical. Every time she sets foot in a courtroom to serve others, however, she is reminded of the most important connections by a small pendant she wears around her neck—a Mother’s Day gift given to her by her two children. Routinely required to take long trips to Japan to continue her work at the forefront of the U.S. innovation industry, and often working long hours, Dori’s professional success would not be possible without the support and love of her husband and children. “A colleague of mine, Barbara McCurdy, has three children and helped show me how to be a caring person and an accomplished lawyer at the same time,” she affirms.
In this sense, as in all aspects of her life, Dori’s professional journey is powered by the people behind it. Whether it’s the people she’s learned from, the people who have learned from her, the people she’s advocated for, the people who have inspired her, or the people she’s inspired, she makes not a solitary line of footprints, but an extensive web of impact that spans in all directions, and with incredible strength.
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