Returning to Fowler School of Law to teach Video Game Law as an adjunct professor this spring is double Panther Kaitlin Peterson (JD/MBA ’16), currently working as general counsel at US multinational tech conglomerate Meta, bringing with her a wealth of experience in gaming, IP and entertainment law. You might think that gaming and entertainment law would have been an obvious choice for this lively and driven Orange County advocate, but when the gaming penny finally dropped, it took Kaitlin Peterson by surprise.

As a student at Chapman, Peterson found her way into any number of leadership roles: President of Moot Court, President of the Sports and Entertainment Law Society, and Treasurer of the Student Bar Association, to name a few. With a natural affinity for sports and being part of a team, she sought internships with the Angels baseball team, and the World Poker Tour–a hybrid of entertainment and sports that played as a TV show but also included gambling– but it was only in former Eric Roeder’s (general counsel of Blizzard Entertainment) gaming law class at Chapman that the proverbial penny dropped with a resounding, “This. Is. It!” says Peterson.

A casual gamer in her youth, Peterson was a quick study of both Blizzard’s gaming portfolio and what her soon-to-be mentor from Blizzard had to offer her and her Chapman class from his years of experience in gaming law.

Peterson excelled under Roeder’s mentorship and tutelage, securing a widely coveted role as in-house counsel at Blizzard and staking her own claim as one of Blizzard’s up-and-coming legal advocates. Four short years later, amid the waxing and waning of tech company fortunes and the ascendancy of social media giant Facebook/Meta, Peterson felt she had “grown beyond [her] role at Blizzard” and joined the Silicon Valley digital behemoth, Meta, in 2020, supporting gaming partnerships, contract deals, and entertainment licensing for public-facing programs for Meta Games. Fast forward to four years later, she is now a rising star in Meta’s Reality Labs legal team, a mixed-reality gaming platform aimed at augmented devices that, to paraphrase Marty McFly: You may not be ready for, but your kids are going to love. This new form of mixed/augmented technology represents a new frontier for the law, digital rights, rights to privacy, in-house advocacy and education.

What Peterson brings to Chapman this spring is something not typically found in law school syllabi. Drawing on her extensive experience as in-house counsel in the tech sector, working with teams of whip-smart creatives, coupled with her leadership, experience starting as far back as her MBA years at Chapman, Peterson intends to walk Fowler School of Law students through the essential relationship-building between attorney and client (and their various in-house teams) to position in-house counsel as their ally, not their adversary. Sure, there are the meat and potatoes of entertainment and gaming law to get through, too, but Peterson’s unique contribution is located squarely in positioning the in-house legal team as an advocate for the organization and an ally for the creative team, something she finds critical and draws on daily in her current role at Meta.

“Chapman already teaches excellent practical knowledge and expertise,” she says, “I’m here to show students how to take that and be a good partner when you are an in-house attorney.”

What Peterson brings to Chapman this spring is something not typically found in law school syllabi. Drawing on her extensive experience as in-house counsel in the tech sector, working with teams of whip-smart creatives, coupled with her leadership experience starting as far back as her MBA years at Chapman, Peterson intends to walk Fowler School of Law students through the essential relationship-building. For Peterson, the early development of her career came from the scaffolding, career opportunities and guidance her mentors provided her with. Her hope is to return the favor and pass along hard-won lessons, insider insights and leadership skills gleaned in the trenches of the tech sector. We are thrilled to have this alumna return to Fowler School of Law to offer these same gifts of guidance, experience, and unique insight from a generation-defining industry like social media, gaming and entertainment.