LOS ANGELES – Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP is pleased to announce that Helen B. Kim, a securities litigation partner based in the firm’s Los Angeles and New York offices, will today be installed as president of the Women Lawyers Association of Los Angeles (WLALA) for 2009-2010. Ms. Kim, who takes over the post from outgoing president, Katherine M. Forster of Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP, will be installed during WLALA’s 90th anniversary event at the Omni Los Angeles Hotel. Ms. Kim assumes the WLALA presidency less than a year after the end of her term as President of the 40,000-member National Asian Pacific American Bar Association.

Founded in 1919, WLALA is the oldest and largest local women’s bar association in California. Its members include federal and state court judges as well as lawyers from every sector of the legal profession, including corporate law departments, law firms of all sizes, government agencies and public interest organizations. The organization is dedicated to promoting the full participation of women lawyers and judges in the legal profession, maintaining the integrity of the legal system by advocating principles of fairness and equality, improving the status of women in society including their exercise of equal rights and reproductive choice, and actively working towards the furtherance of these goals through WLALA’s committees, sections and activities.

“I am deeply honored to serve as the next President of WLALA and the WLALA Foundation and am particularly proud to be the first Asian-American to lead the organization,” Ms. Kim said. “Unfortunately, the need for WLALA, its work and its programs is greater than ever. Although women have comprised nearly half of our nation’s law school graduates for the past 20 years, they have not yet achieved parity with men in the legal profession or in our society as a whole. I look forward to working with WLALA and its dedicated membership to advance the promotion and retention of women in the legal profession.”

Ms. Kim represents public and private companies and their directors, officers and principal shareholders in complex commercial litigation, including the defense of securities and other class actions, shareholder derivative suits and regulatory investigations. Most notably, she represents the former general counsel of Refco Inc. in numerous securities class actions and related insurance coverage litigation arising from Refco’s demise in October 2005.

A former classical pianist, Ms. Kim performed with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at age 10 and a year later opened the Mostly Mozart Festival at the Hollywood Bowl. After receiving a master’s degree in classical piano performance from Juilliard in 1984, she switched to law, earning her J.D. from Yale Law School in 1987, where she was a Note Editor of the Yale Law Journal. Ms. Kim is also co-editor of the American Bar Association’s Litigation Section’s Securities Litigation Journal, a member of the ABA’s Commission on Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Profession, and a member of the Los Angeles County Bar’s Judicial Appointments Committee.

Ms. Kim lives in Hancock Park with her husband, attorney Richard E. Nathan and their two children, Rebecca, 15, and Joshua, six.