Jennifer Keller was up against it. At the client’s insistence, she parachuted into the long-running litigation over ownership of the ­multibillion-dollar Bratz dolls just weeks before the case was schedule for its second trial (the first having ended in a debacle for that client, MGA Entertainment Inc.) She faced barely contained hostility from the company’s longtime counsel and a grueling trial schedule.

“I just figured that the best thing I could do was to immediately show my colleagues what a good trial lawyer I am,” Keller told the NLJ’s Amanda Bronstad.