Karen Monroe

Karen Monroe is an international business lawyer whose focus is in the areas of cross-border corporate, commercial, tax, intellectual property law, trusts and estates, and related litigations and arbitrations with an emphasis on cross-border legal matters between the U.S., Switzerland, and Europe. 

Ms. Monroe is an expert on U.S./Swiss legal issues having spent the last 30 years of her career working in Geneva, Switzerland, and spending her entire career solving multijurisdictional legal issues. In particular, she assists Swiss companies in the U.S. and U.S. companies in Switzerland solve legal issues and expand their businesses.  For dual U.S./Swiss nationals and other country dual nationals, she resolves their particular legal issues relating to tax, real estate, and estate planning.  Ms. Monroe is also a dual national—U.S. and Swiss--and speaks and works daily in English and French.  Ms. Monroe is from New York City and admitted to the New York State bar.  Ms. Monroe splits her time between the New York and Geneva, Switzerland offices.

Her clients include individuals and companies across a variety of market sectors, including banking and finance, technology, food and beverages, software, luxury goods, crypto, and entertainment  (music, television, fashion, film, publishing, art).  She negotiates transactions, drafts a wide range of documentation and agreements, and handles litigations and arbitrations relating to mergers and acquisitions, commercial transactions, venture capital, finance, securities, licensing, and technology, both in English and French. In the area of finance, she has represented both banks and borrowers in connection with commercial loans, acquisition financing, secured lending and insurance premium financing.  She drafts various intellectual property licensing agreements and has been involved with the registration of trademarks both in the U.S. and abroad.  Her cross-border legal practice has touched jurisdictions around the world including the U.S., Switzerland, Japan, Moldova, France, Austria, Germany, Italy, United Kingdom, Ireland, Morocco, and Latin America.

Ms. Monroe is a past president of the Foreign Lawyers Section of the Geneva Bar Association, a position she held for five years, and served for four years as legal counsel to Democrats Abroad-Switzerland.  She serves as outside general counsel and as a member of the board of directors of Swiss and U.S. for profit and not-for-profit companies.  She currently serves as Secretary/Treasurer for the Senior Lawyers Committee of the International Bar Association and as an executive committee member of the Foreign Lawyers Section of the Geneva Bar Association.

She regularly speaks at conferences and universities on cross-border legal issues, including teaching  at the University of St. Gallen, the leading business university in Switzerland, MBA-level courses on U.S. contract law and U.S. intellectual property law, and regularly at International Bar Association conferences.  She is also the author of numerous articles on cross-border legal issues.