Godfrey & Kahn places antitrust trust in Reimann

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Allison Reimann never expected to become a lawyer.

Growing up, she was interested in science and earned a degree in biology from Kalamazoo College. That brought her to work for an environmental-consulting firm in Michigan.

In that role, she got particular enjoyment from diving into regulatory language. So Reimann decided to go to law school.

Initially, she expected she’d pursue environmental law. But through her experience at law school, working as a summer associate at two firms and as a clerk at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, she became interested in the health-care industry.

“It’s a very regulated industry. It has a lot of science in the background,” Reimann said. “Something interesting in health care is that it has some bearing in your everyday life.”

After graduating with a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania, Reimann joined the Chicago firm Sidley Austin. She set out to practice health-care law there, but found herself drawn into antitrust cases early on.

“That’s one of the great things about working on litigation generally, is each case is different,” Reimann said. “Each case makes you learn something new about the facts of your case.”

After six years in Chicago, Reimann moved to Wisconsin and joined Godfrey & Kahn. The firm was then looking for someone with her strengths and knowledge to build an antitrust practice. After meeting with the firm’s leaders in Milwaukee and Madison, she felt it was the perfect fit.

“There are a lot of antitrust lawyers who go into it knowing what they want to do,” she said. “That’s something I discovered almost by happenstance.”

Outside of her regular practice, Reimann has taken on various pro bono cases. One of them involved helping a sex-trafficking victim regain custody of her child and helping an Eretrian refugee gain asylum status in the U.S.

Reimann is also a member of the board of directors of the Madison Public Schools Foundation and a member of the diversity and inclusion committee for the Seventh Circuit Bar Association, through which she worked to bring a pair of panel discussions on diversity to Milwaukee.