Private equity deal-making surged 22% in 2024 to $1.7 trillion globally, while healthcare law continues expanding rapidly amid regulatory changes and digital transformation. We caught up with three Suffolk Law graduates who have built successful practices in these high-demand fields—from co-chairing a major firm practice group to closing major transactions. 

Damaris Medina, JD ’07, is a shareholder at Buchalter in Los Angeles; Andrea Bidegaray Stephen, JD ’10, is of counsel in the corporate department at Ropes & Gray in New York City; and Elizabeth Rahn Gallucci, JD ’10, is a partner at Ropes & Gray in San Francisco. Here, they share insights about their career paths and Suffolk Law experience and offer advice for students.

Talk about your journey since graduation from Suffolk Law and why you pursued the specialty you did in your practice of law.

Medina: After graduating, I planned to move to the west coast, but I took a year to work for a small firm doing business/commercial litigation in the banking space in New York. I moved to California in the middle of the 2008 recession, which was hard. I took a job doing plaintiff-side class action employment work and was able to grow that office from a two-attorney shop to 10. I wanted to get back into commercial business litigation and into a larger platform, so I joined the commercial litigation and employment practice groups at a larger firm in Los Angeles. At that point, the managing partner saw that I was not just interested in being a service partner but in ownership too. He encouraged me to develop a business plan in an area I had the biggest network in, which at the time was healthcare. There was a partner who had a healthcare practice, and I got in on one of the cases and fell in love with it. I got good advice early on to develop a niche, so I started building expertise in the healthcare space, specifically in some of the emerging areas and issues in the industry. I started working on some cases that were of import at the time, including one that ultimately went to the California Supreme Court. After six or seven years, the platform at that firm felt too small for me to take my practice to the next level, so I started to look for a larger firm, and landed at Buchalter as partner.

Stephen: I graduated law school during the Great Recession. I started my career at Weil Gotshal in Boston but did my deferral year with one of our clients, Univision, in Los Angeles. That deferral year gave me a sense of what it might be like to work in-house, while also having had experienced a bit of life in a big law firm as a summer associate. I could appreciate the training I was receiving at Weil from various talented lawyers with differing styles, but was able to go back to Weil with the perspective of a client. As a mid-level associate, I moved to Ropes & Gray in New York with some of the partners from Weil that I considered mentors. I remained in the private equity group at Ropes, and I found private equity to be interesting and challenging and liked the clients and enjoyed the complexity of the transactions. Ropes provided flexibility and had an openness to it, which at the time was critical for me while I was starting my family. As a senior associate, I wanted to take a different career path, and Ropes offered me the flexibility, time, and title to explore a new type of role.  As counsel, I have been able to build and establish a practice with clients focused primarily on complex minority investments, equity arrangements and co-invests.

Gallucci: I went to Ropes to start as a summer associate. I took what they called a “NAP” year—the New Alternatives Program—working in a nonprofit for a year. Ropes used this program during the recession to delay start dates but maintain their hiring plans because there was almost no corporate transactional work. Thereafter, I committed to the corporate group. I was drawn to transactional work generally, not knowing what private equity work entailed at the time. I learned very quickly that the private equity group was a large practice group at the firm and that private equity clients were key clients. I moved to San Francisco and started in a completely different (and much smaller) office, but the benefit for me was I got to grow with the office. There were just a few folks doing private equity transaction work there at the time, and I worked closely with them to build knowledge in the practice area. I wanted to be at a big firm for four years to get the training and experience. After my fourth year, I really began to enjoy the work and started to take a lead associate role on my matters. Candidly, I didn’t have “making partner” as a career goal—it seemed extremely daunting. But I plugged along and realized I had a real shot, and I made a push for a promotion in 2020. I’ve been a partner for a few years now.

How do your firms take care to cultivate and support women for leadership roles at the firm?

Medina: Buchalter has always had a culture of championing women. I believe we had the first female managing partner in Los Angeles back in the day. It wasn't necessarily specific women championing me, but a top-down culture from a management perspective to champion people of diverse backgrounds. I have never felt more supported than I do here. It's a spirit of “what can we do to support and help you?” After just a year, I was asked to chair the Women at Buchalter committee. Then I was asked to be on the board of directors. And last year, I was asked to become the diversity, equity, and inclusion officer for the firm. This is really illustrative of the firm’s support for women in leadership at the firm. They go beyond words, backing them with actions.

Stephen: Ropes is great about thinking outside of the box and creating more bespoke arrangements. They value diversity and inclusion and recognize that not everyone has or wants the same path but can add value to the firm. My mentor and others within Ropes helped me structure my position and helped me come up with my business plan. When I recruit now, I am able to tell students and younger associates that there isn’t just one path and walk them through my career as an example, which continues to evolve and build.

Gallucci: There is room and flexibility to grow. Private equity lawyers are not all similar now, and we were part of the group here that got to see that start to change. Even outside of private equity, we have partners who were off track for years and then returned and said, “I want to make the push to be a partner,” and they’re partners now. The firm has been open-minded about that and it’s reflected in the numbers.

What advice do you have for our recent class of 2025 graduates who share your legal interests?

Medina: First, reach out to people who've gone through what you're going through in starting at a practice on the West Coast, like other Suffolk Law alums. Second, I believe the industry has turned away from clients seeking generalists to clients seeking industry experts or experts in a particular legal niche. If you have interest in building a book of business, become an expert in a particular industry area or a niche issue. Third, I’ve never had a firm tell me “no” when I’ve shown an interest in getting involved beyond legal work. There’s the everyday work, of course, but showing an interest in leadership within the firm, and being proactive, sets you apart to management. You can start doing so even with smaller things at the beginning, like offering to help on a firm committee.

Stephen: If you want work in big law, there’s always a threshold question of academic performance. Beyond that, I think it’s good to reach out to people and network, seek out mentors and understand what the job entails, and what it means to be good at the job. Take advantage of the resources at Suffolk Law and in the community, such as going to networking events, doing practice interviews and the like. I know it seems silly, but the more you practice interviewing, the better you get. Your network is already there—at Suffolk Law or among your junior counterparts at a firm. Making friends with your peers at school or your colleagues when you are starting out matters as they’ll be great resources and an understanding support system.

Gallucci: For any job out of law school, there’s this idea that you must have a mentor. But it’s important to remember that mentorship is a two-way street. You need to bring something to the table, too. The best way to have a productive relationship is to keep showing up and working hard. If you can be that person for somebody, they’re going to want to go to bat for you. And it means something to start having these touchpoints, however small.

How do you reflect back on Suffolk Law, or professors in particular, when you think about how you were educated as a lawyer?

Medina: In terms of professors, it’s hard for me to just choose one. I had so many supportive and invested professors at Suffolk. There are two that come to mind immediately—Professor Robert Kaplan for legal writing was awesome. He taught me how to think like a lawyer and articulate arguments in an effective way. My professor for clinical practice, Ilene Seidman, was also fantastic. To have that clinical experience as a 3L, arguing a motion and taking care of my own clients, and doing billing for the first time—it’s when I really fell in love with being a lawyer. It wasn’t theoretical anymore. She gave me the confidence to know I could actually be a litigator and drive meaningful change at the same time. It was inspiring.

Stephen: In law school it's probably impossible to address the many unique elements of a private equity career, but Suffolk Law offered me a great foundation. I was surrounded by smart, hardworking students who were eager to succeed, and we had incredible professors. They’d all gone to the top law schools and were so good at teaching in such a clear way that made it enjoyable. It’s hard to name all of the ones that stuck out to me, because there were so many, but Professor Patrick Shin, Professor Simard, and Professor Jeffrey Lipshaw were all really incredible.

Gallucci: We didn’t learn legal theory at Suffolk; instead, we learned how to read, write, and interpret the law and to produce work products that were useful. I was appreciative of the concrete nature of the traditional legal education, and I enjoyed every second of it.