Alumni Connection

Katie Dugan '07, Assistant General Counsel, Yext

By Mike Riccobono '09

Katie Dugan, Class of '07, shares a similar career path with many of us in the legal profession. After graduating from Seton Hall Law, Katie completed a clerkship with the Honorable Robert Polifroni, P.J.Cv. (Ret.) in Bergen County. Her clerkship exposed her to several contentious employment discrimination cases which helped spark her interest in pursuing a career as an employment lawyer. Following her clerkship, Katie worked for the law firms of Cole Shotz and Genova Burns where she helped companies comply with the dizzying array of state and federal employment laws and defend them in litigation matters. "I really enjoyed serving as a trusted advisor for our clients and helping them resolve challenging day-to-day employment law questions and issues."
   
Ultimately, Katie's interest in the counseling aspects of employment law helped land her a job as in-house employment law counsel with toy manufacturing giant Mattel, Inc. in California, and she relocated there from New Jersey. "While in-house at Mattel, I was really forced to learn a lot about the business and understand risk analysis - things that I did not necessarily have to worry about while working at a law firm, but which help make you an indispensable part of any in-house legal department."

In her current role, Katie works as Assistant General Counsel for Yext, an artificial intelligence search platform, where she works to help the company connect people with "answers, not ads." "Every good lawyer knows that you must appropriately cite your sources," Katie said. "It's no different at Yext. We believe that the information should be coming from the source itself." As Katie explains it, unlike other enterprise search engines, which only scan for keywords and delivers a list of hyperlinks rather than actually answering questions, Yext uses artificial intelligence that understands natural language so that when people ask questions about a business online, they get direct answers, not links. Katie finds her job to be most rewarding when she is able to help her business partners understand the legal "why" behind a particular course of action or advice in an effort to help the company's business goals.

Katie currently lives in Ridgewood and enjoys spending time with her children and friends, including many of her fellow Seton Hall Law classmates with whom she remains close.

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