Kara Baysinger is a partner in the Corporate & Financial Services Department and a member of the firm’s Insurance Transactional and Regulatory Practice Group. She serves as Co-Chair of Willkie’s Insurance Regulatory and Insurtech groups. She has vast experience representing national and international insurance and reinsurance companies, insurance-related service companies, insurtech companies and technology companies on a wide array of insurance regulatory, compliance and strategic matters. She also advises clients on regulatory investigations and examinations (including multi-state examinations), innovation and digital transformation, licensing, transactional and M&A matters, reinsurance, cybersecurity, market conduct, sales practices, and product and market development issues.
Kara’s commitment is recognized by Chambers USA (2023), where a client described her as, “my attorney of choice for insurance and regulatory matters.” She has been recognized as a leading practitioner since the inception of Chambers in both California and Nationwide for Insurance.
Kara began her career working in-house for insurance companies, where she led compliance, market conduct, product development and government relations functions. She is also the co-author of “Courageous Counsel: Conversations with Women General Counsel in the Fortune 500,” a groundbreaking look at the paths of women into the ranks of General Counsel.
Experience
Prior to joining Willkie in 2021, Kara served as co-leader of Mayer Brown's US Insurance Regulatory & Enforcement Group.
- Chambers USA, Insurance: Insurer (Band 1), California, 2023
- Chambers USA, Insurance: Transactional & Regulatory (Band 2), Nationwide, 2023
- Recognized by Legal 500 U.S. as a “Leading Lawyer” in Insurance- Insurance Non-Contentious, 2023
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Named to BTI Client Service All-Stars 2022 for exemplary, client-focused legal practice
- Named as a leading insurance lawyer in both California and nationally by Chambers USA (2004 - 2022). In the 2022 edition, where Kara is ranked in Band 1, she is lauded for maintaining a “highly respected insurance practice,” with clients citing her “very broad and deep industry experience and knowledge,” “great insights” into their issues, and her unique ability to handle bad faith claims and “the biggest cases.”
- Named as one of the Best Lawyers in California for Insurance Law in the “Women in Law” edition of Best Lawyers (2023)
- Named as a “Leading Lawyer” in The Legal 500 US – Insurance: Non-Contentious (2019-2022)
- Named as one of the Best Lawyers in America for Insurance Law by U.S. News and World Report - Best Lawyers (2018-2023)
- Consistently named by Super Lawyers as top rated for Insurance (2005-2017)
- Named as one of the “Most Influential Women in Bay Area Business” by The San Francisco Business Times in 2014, and again in 2017, when she was added to the "Forever Influential Honor Roll."
- Named as a leading practitioner in Euromoney's “Women in Business Law” (2017)
- Named as a leading practitioner in Euromoney's “Insurance & Reinsurance” (2017)
- Recognized as leading practitioner in Insurance and Reinsurance by Expert Guides: Guide to the World's Leading Women in Business Law (2016)
- Recommended in The Legal 500 for Healthcare: Health Insurers (2012, 2014), and in the category of Insurance: Non-Contentious (2011–2015) for her capacity to "handle difficult and politically sensitive issues"
- In 2014, Kara was one of five recipients of the Mayre Rasmussen Award for the Advancement of Women in International Law, an annual accolade presented by the ABA's Section of International Law
- The Insurance Regulatory Examiners Society presented Kara with the Schrader-Nelson Publications Award (2014)
Credentials
Education
Loyola University Chicago School of Law, J.D. University of Michigan, B.A.