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As LexisNexis Global Chief Legal Officer, Ken Thompson has transformed the culture of the company's in-house corporate counsel function. In the process, he has taken the office from a distant advisory wing to a legal services organization, trusted by leadership and deeply embedded in the company's day-to-day operations. The result has significantly raised commitment and job satisfaction for the legal team, which rates near the top in employee satisfaction surveys. The reason is simple. Ken's emphasis on a business perspective has enabled the company's lawyers to operate at a much more strategic level-not just as lawyers, but rather as business advisors, free to challenge and ask the right questions.
In 2001, Ken Joined LexisNexis as a partner from a Cincinnati law firm where he had built a substantial practice. At the time, LexisNexis was aggressively moving toward solutions, so Ken came in as Assistant General Counsel managing the LexisNexis Content Acquisition group charged with acquiring the pieces needed to build those solutions. In particular, Ken concentrated in complex content acquisitions, intellectual property issues, and mergers and acquisitions.
Two years later, Ken took over legal Intellectual Property and was promoted to Deputy General Counsel. Several years later, he was again promoted, first to acting Chief Legal Officer, U.S., then, a year ago, to Global Chief Legal Officer. In his role as Global CLO, Ken continues to focus on his core areas of expertise: intellectual property, acquisitions and divestiture, anti-trust, and Internet security issues. Indeed, in line with his security focus, the Chief Security Officer now reports to Ken, overseeing the governance and protection of the vast quantities of information that LexisNexis gathers and stores. Today, as a member of the LexisNexis Group Management Committee, Ken leads and advises at the highest levels of the company. He also remains the principal legal advisor to the LexisNexis Global Chief Executive Officer.
Prior to joining LexisNexis, for more than 15 years, Ken was a partner in a highly respected Cincinnati, Ohio, law firm. Here he rose quickly, taking five years to make partner and only eight to become a member of the executive committee, and all while building a large business, much of it in the technology sector. In the process, Ken was admitted to practice in Ohio and Kentucky. He also came before the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and the U.S. Tax Court.
Ken is a past chair of the Ohio State Bar Association's Computer and High Technology Law Committee, where he did ground-breaking work on the work-made-for-hire doctrine, as well as the state's white collar computer crime laws, then in their infancy. In addition, Ken is a former member of the Ohio State Bar Association Intellectual Property Section Board of Governors, and a former member of the Ohio State Bar Association's Council of Delegates.
Ken has a B.A. degree from Capital University and a JD from the University of Cincinnati College of Law. His broad expertise makes him an authoritative and highly engaging public speaker on a range of issues: intellectual property, acquisitions and divestitures, anti-trust, and Internet security. | 