Alumni Story: Alexis Savini ’14

I'm working at Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton LLP on their corporate startup team. KTS is mostly known for their IP and patent work, so it's interesting to be on a smaller team within the firm that is doing something different from everyone else. We work with a lot of Bay Area startups, mostly medical device companies that need help with forming a company and finding funding opportunities. So far I'm really enjoying it - the corporate team is pretty small, so I've been given a good bit of responsibility and am definitely learning a lot. I'm mostly doing a lot of formations (which is honestly just a lot of paperwork), but in the end I'm transforming a guy with an idea into an actual company, which I think is pretty cool. We work with a lot of UCSF and Stanford professors and grad students, so a lot of the technology we get to see is pretty amazing (and completely over my head).

In terms of how this work relates to my MSS major, I suppose it mostly relates to my interest in the legal field and eventually law school. My time at the Innocence Project (which became my thesis topic) was my first foray into the legal field and I really enjoyed it, but now I'm switching gears from criminal to corporate law to see how I like that aspect of the law. Working with startups, there is a fair amount of math in determining equity splits and funding goals (although it's all fairly low level math), so in that aspect I have used my MSS degree — I do most of the calculations. But more broadly, I think my MSS major and the combination of government and math I chose has mostly helped me to refine my writing and analytical skills, and hone my ability to combine them.