Valerie J. Blevins

Valerie has been with Shook since 1994. She has extensive experience successfully assisting clients with the legal and practical issues associated with the pretrial and discovery-related aspects of complex product liability litigation and preparing cases for trial. Valerie has also worked on issues related to Food and Drug Administration regulations and procedures, patent infringement claims, a putative nationwide class action based on alleged violations of Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations and Robinson-Patman Acts, and the defense of an antitrust case brought by a generic pharmaceutical manufacturer against a name-brand manufacturer.

Valerie’s experience on behalf of Shook clients includes:

• establishing and managing clients’ document collections, reviews and productions in complex litigation;
• supporting outside trial counsel at a variety of firms in addition to Shook;
• reviewing documents and ESI for responsiveness, confidentiality, privilege and proprietary information;
• developing, organizing and analyzing documents, ESI and testimony for issues relevant to claims, defenses and witness preparation;
• drafting responses to written discovery requests;
• coordinating the affirmative discovery and analysis of opposing parties' documents;
• preparing (or commenting on drafts of) legal hold notices, protective orders, discovery plans, case management orders and discovery manuals;
• advising on retention policies and the defensible destruction of documents and ESI;
• drafting (or commenting on drafts of) privilege review guidelines;
• preparing, reviewing and finalizing privilege logs;
• coordinating and supporting document review with other outside counsel and/or third-party review vendors;
• defensibly eliminating irrelevant documents and ESI from collection and review; and
• formulating efficient and cost-effective approaches for meeting discovery obligations and coordinating productions among several unrelated cases.

Such projects have included multimillion-page document collections in product liability cases and one matter involved Valerie’s two-year secondment to the client.

Valerie has authored presentations and white papers on complex litigation, preemption and comparative fault issues. She has also provided research assistance to the authors of "Guide to Epidemiology" in Expert Evidence: A Practitioner’s Guide to Law, Science and the FJC Manual (West 1997).

Valerie takes an active role in the firm’s recruiting and mentoring efforts. She also dedicates time to pro bono work. Before attending law school, Valerie worked as a paralegal in the firm’s Business Litigation Practice on antitrust, securities fraud and franchise law issues.