DJC UP & COMING LAWYERS 2011
Parna Mehrbani
LANE POWELL PC
Lewis and Clark, 2005
If you could have a drink with any
person, dead or alive, who would it be?
I know I should probably choose someone
in the legal scholar genre, but if I'm
perfectly honest, George Harrison.
Do you have any tattoos?
Yes, two!
If you could have a
superpower, what would it be?
Flying. Or maybe organizing things with a
wave of my hand, as that might be more
useful on a day-to-day basis.
What is something that
most people don’t know about you?
That I really, really love Star Trek
… especially The Next Generation.
What do you spend
your non-lawyer time doing?
Knitting; teaching knitting
classes at Twisted, a yarn
shop on Northeast Broadway;
reading; and playing goalkeeper
on the best soccer team ever,
the Belle Bottoms.
If you hadn’t become
an attorney, what career
would you have pursued?
I would have pursued a career in
writing -- poetry and travel writing.
What person do you most admire?
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (and in
fact, also Eleanor Roosevelt).
ecoming an attorney is something
Lane Powell’s Parna Mehrbani wanted
to do from a young age. She originally
wanted to pursue a doctorate in English
literature at the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign, but after working at the
Environmental Law and Policy Center of the
Midwest as an intern, she decided to apply to
Lewis and Clark Law School.
Today, Mehrbani’s practice focuses on
intellectual property law. She manages Lane
Powell’s trademark registration and enforcement
practice, including trademark portfolios for both
small and large companies. She has been named
an Oregon Rising Star for the past three years by
Super Lawyers.
An expert in the growing area of online
intellectual property law, Mehrbani assists her
clients with domain name disputes, security
and privacy concerns, contracts for e-
If you were trapped on a desert island,
you couldn’t live without your:
Knitting.
B
Which song is in heavy
rotation on your iPod?
“Hummingbird” by Wilco.
commerce and other online legal
matters.
“It’s an exciting practice area,” said Mehrbani.
“You’re trying to apply legal rules that were not
made for the Internet to protect your clients.”
Outside Lane Powell, Mehrbani provides pro
bono services to underprivileged clients and is
a recipient of Lewis and Clark’s Pro Bono
Honors Award. She has been included on the
Multnomah Bar Association’s Pro Bono Honor
Roll. She is also the co-chairwoman of the
Board of Directors for Rock and Roll Camp For
Girls, a nonprofit that seeks to build self esteem
in girls and women by teaching them music
and performance skills.
UP AND COMING LAWYERS | NOVEMBER 2011
What was the last book you read?
“Road-side Dog,” a book of poems by
Czeslaw Milosz.
What was the most influential
Supreme Court decision of all time?
Marbury v. Madison.
What was the most harmful
Supreme Court decision of all time?
This is a hard question. I think I would say
Bowers v. Hardwick, but that was later
overruled, which is what happens with most
of the “bad” or “harmful” decisions over
time. In recent history: Bush v. Gore, not for
the simple reason of the result, but because
of the federalism issues raised by the
decision and because I think the unusual
rushed procedure affected the analysis.
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