Creative problem solving is what clients need in this ever-changing technological landscape. And that’s what Preetha Chakrabarti provides. As a member of Crowell & Moring LLP’s Technology & Intellectual Property Department, a co-leader of the firm’s ESG Advisory Group, and a co-leader of the firm’s Metaverse working group, Preetha seeks to offer holistic and integrated counsel to her clients. Her practice cuts across all areas of intellectual property, consisting of litigation, counseling, licensing, and transactional due diligence as well as trademark prosecution. In particular, she advises clients in the technology, retail, and fashion industries on how best to manage risks when using and developing intellectual property.

Preetha is also well known for helping companies understand their obligations regarding the advertising of environmental, social, and governance-related claims, including claims about carbon offsets, greenwashing, bluewashing, waste reduction and recycling, woke-washing, and social issues. She leverages rich experience in counseling companies across multiple industries—including food and beverage, fashion, media and telecommunications, technology, and consumer products—to help clients understand industry-specific challenges and achieve their business objectives.

Preetha also takes pro bono work seriously, and her practice includes cases involving appellate, immigration, family, and employment law as well as IP counseling for nonprofit entities. Preetha successfully represented Sandra Avery, a woman sentenced to life in prison for a nonviolent, low level drug crime who sought commutation of her sentence from President Barack Obama, reducing her life sentence to time served. Sandra was one of the 95 nonviolent drug offenders to whom Obama granted clemency in December 2015. Preetha was featured in the documentary film The Vanishing Trial by the Families Against Mandatory Minimums and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, released in 2020 in connection with her representation of Sandra. She also received the firm’s 2015 George Bailey Award for her pro bono contributions. In July 2023, Preetha was appointed to The City of New York Mayor’s Advisory Committee on the Judiciary, which works to recruit and encourage diverse and highly qualified persons to serve as a judge of the Criminal, Family, or on an interim basis, the Civil Court.

There are many experiences that form the foundation of Preetha’s interdisciplinary legal practice, but a few stand out. In 2012, during her final semester of law school, Preetha participated in LawWithoutWalls, a part-virtual collaboration that develops problem-solving and project management business skills necessary to provide effective legal services in today’s global, multidisciplinary, and cross-cultural marketplace. Her group placed first in key presentation categories, and overall, the group was one of three finalists. In 2015, Preetha was selected as a 2015 Pathfinder by the Leadership Council on Legal Diversity, a national organization comprised of the legal profession’s top general counsels and managing partners. And from 2019 to 2020, Preetha served as a judicial law clerk for the Honorable O. Rogeriee Thompson of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.