Karen Dunn (born November 1975) is an American attorney and political operative.
Dunn is a former partner at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. As an attorney, she has represented clients including Apple, Oracle, and Uber, and in 2021, she defended Apple in a lawsuit brought by Epic Games.
Dunn is a specialist in debate preparation in Democratic politics, particularly for candidates for president and vice president. Dunn and Ron Klain co-led President Barack Obama's presidential debate preparation team in 2012 and led the presidential debate preparation for Hillary Clinton in 2016. In the fall of 2020, Dunn oversaw preparation of Kamala Harris for the general election vice presidential debates. In 2024, Dunn led debate preparation of Harris for the 2024 United States presidential debates.
Alongside Roberta Kaplan, Dunn was one of the lead attorneys for the plaintiffs in a successful $25 million civil suit against the organizers of Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Dunn was an associate White House counsel in 2009, and an assistant U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia in 2010.
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Early life and education
Dunn is the daughter of Nina Laserson Dunn and Theodore M. Dunn. She received a Bachelor of Arts, magna cum laude, from Brown University and a J.D. from Yale Law School. She is of Jewish descent.
Career
In 1999, Dunn joined the campaign team for Hillary Clinton, who was preparing to run for a Senate seat in New York. Following Clinton’s election to the Senate, Dunn worked as press secretary for Clinton, then as her communications director until 2003.
After law school, Dunn served as a law clerk to United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit Judge Merrick Garland in 2006. In 2007, she was a law clerk for United States Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer.
Dunn became deputy to Obama’s chief strategist, David Axelrod, in July 2008. Following Obama’s inauguration in 2009, she was named associate White House counsel. In July of that same year, Dunn prepared Sonia Sotomayor for the Senate hearings before her confirmation as a Supreme Court justice.
Dunn was hired as a prosecutor for the Eastern District of Virginia in 2010.
In 2012, Dunn co-directed preparation for Obama’s re-election campaign debates.
She joined private practice as partner at the law firm Boies, Schiller, and Flexner in 2014. The same year, Dunn and her husband Brian Netter, also an attorney, served as pro bono counsel on behalf of the D.C. Council, which filed suit against District of Columbia Mayor Vincent C. Gray and chief financial officer Jeffrey DeWitt over their refusal to act on the 2012 Budget Autonomy Act. The Superior Court of the District of Columbia ruled in favor of Dunn and Netter’s clients, the D.C. Council, in 2016.
Dunn and colleague Bill Isaacson successfully defended Apple in a $1 billion class action lawsuit over an update to its iPod music player, winning a unanimous verdict in favor of the technology company in December 2014.
Dunn oversaw Hillary Clinton’s debate preparation for both the Democratic primaries and the general election presidential debates in 2016.
Other activities
She was an adviser to the political thriller television series House of Cards.
Personal life
In 2009, Dunn married attorney Brian Netter, whom she met at Yale Law School.