Karen F. Green
Massachusetts Superior Court
Boston, Massachusetts
Massachusetts Superior Court Justice Karen F. Green served as the 2016 President of the Litigation Counsel of America.
Prior to her judicial appointment, Justice Green was a senior partner in Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP’s Boston office where she focused her practice on complex business litigation, including the defense of white-collar criminal and False Claims Act litigation. Justice Green first joined legacy Hale and Dorr as associate in 1982. She was elected junior partner in 1988 and senior partner in 1990. During her legal career, Justice Green has served in various public service positions, including as an Assistant US Attorney and Deputy Chief of the Civil Division of the US Attorney’s Office in Boston in the mid-1980s and as Chief of Staff to Massachusetts Governor William F. Weld in 1993. From 1993 to 1996, she served as First Assistant US Attorney at the US Attorney’s Office. During her time in private practice, Justice Green made many contributions across the firm, including serving as chair of Hale and Dorr’s Litigation Department, co-chair of WilmerHale’s Litigation/Controversy Department and on the firm’s Executive Committee, and as a mentor in and leader of the Women’s Leadership Initiative.
During her legal career, Justice Green was consistently recognized by clients and peers as one of the world’s leading investigations lawyers in Who’s Who Legal: Investigations and Who’s Who Legal: Business Crime Defense, and as a litigation leader in the area of white collar criminal defense in Best Lawyers in America, Chambers USA, Boston Magazine, and other publications. She was listed in the 2004-2015 editions of New England Super Lawyers and featured in the 2015 edition. She was again selected by Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly as a “Top Woman of the Law” and was inducted into its Circle of Excellence in 2015.
Justice Green served as a director of CareGroup, Inc., an organization of teaching and community hospitals, including Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, New England Baptist Hospital and Mt. Auburn Hospital, and of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation. She has served as a director or trustee of numerous other organizations, including Fiduciary Trust Company, Massachusetts Eye and Ear, the Boston Bar Association, the Harvard Club of Boston, the Massachusetts Children’s Trust Fund, and The Fenn School. She is a 2015 Fellow of Harvard University’s Advanced Leadership Initiative.
She received her JD, cum laude, from Harvard Law School, and is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard and Radcliffe Colleges, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. From 1981-1982, she clerked for U.S. District Court Judge W. Arthur Garrity, Jr.
