Karen Dunn

Karen Dunn (born November 1975) is an American attorney and political operative.

Dunn is a former partner at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. and in 2021, she defended Apple in a lawsuit brought by Epic Games.

Dunn is a specialist in debate preparation in Democratic politics, particularly for candidates for president and vice president. Dunn and Ron Klain co-led President Barack Obama's presidential debate preparation team in 2012 and led the presidential debate preparation for Hillary Clinton in 2016. In the fall of 2020, Dunn oversaw preparation of Kamala Harris for the general election vice presidential debates. In 2024, Dunn led debate preparation of Harris for the 2024 United States presidential debates.

Alongside Roberta Kaplan, Dunn was one of the lead attorneys for the plaintiffs in a successful $25 million civil suit against the organizers of Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Dunn was an associate White House counsel in 2009, and an assistant U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia in 2010.

Early life and education Dunn is the daughter of Nina Laserson Dunn and Theodore M. Dunn.

Career In 1999, Dunn joined the campaign team for Hillary Clinton, who was preparing to run for a Senate seat in New York. Following Clinton’s election to the Senate, Dunn worked as press secretary for Clinton, then as her communications director until 2003. Following Obama’s inauguration in 2009, she was named associate White House counsel. In July of that same year, Dunn prepared Sonia Sotomayor for the Senate hearings before her confirmation as a Supreme Court justice.

Dunn was hired as a prosecutor for the Eastern District of Virginia in 2010. The same year, Dunn and her husband Brian Netter, also an attorney, served as pro bono counsel on behalf of the D.C. Council, which filed suit against District of Columbia Mayor Vincent C. Gray and chief financial officer Jeffrey DeWitt over their refusal to act on the 2012 Budget Autonomy Act.

Dunn oversaw Hillary Clinton’s debate preparation for both the Democratic primaries and the general election presidential debates in 2016. According to authors Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes in their book Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton's Doomed Campaign, Dunn was considered as a lead contender to serve as White House Counsel should Hillary Clinton have won the presidency in 2016.

In 2017, Dunn defended Uber in a case in which Uber was accused by autonomous driving technology company Waymo of stealing driverless technology trade secrets.

The American Lawyer magazine named Dunn “Litigator of the Year” in 2017, citing her “high-stakes” work defending Uber; representing Apple in a patent lawsuit disputing the Qualcomm patent licensing model; and summary judgment for Beats - owned by Apple - in a $1 billion suit brought by Monster.

Dunn was one of the lead attorneys in the civil suit against the organizers of the 2017 Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, representing multiple Charlottesville residents and counter-protesters. Dunn’s clients were awarded more than $25 million in damages in November 2021. At Paul, Weiss, Dunn counseled Jeff Bezos during his testimony before a congressional committee in July 2020.

During the 2020 election cycle, Dunn oversaw Kamala Harris’s preparation for the general election vice presidential debates.

Other activities She was an adviser to the political thriller television series House of Cards.