Biography • Product Liability Defence

Madeleine McDonough chairs Shook, Hardy & Bacon's pharmaceutical and medical device litigation division, and she co-chairs the firm's agribusiness and food safety practice and life sciences and biotechnology practice. She also serves as national e-discovery counsel for clients.

Ms McDonough serves as counsel to clients in a range of industries: pharmaceutical, animal health, medical device, food, cosmetics and beverage. She counsels clients on Food and Drug Administration regulations and represents corporations and individuals in product liability, toxic tort, personal injury, and commercial matters. Ms McDonough advises organisations on preventative litigation approaches, policy and governance issues, emerging legal developments, creative resolution strategies, risk management, corporate social responsibility and crisis management.

She is currently serving a third three-year term on the firm's executive committee, and she heads up civic, diversity, pro bono, training and client development activities.

In 2012, she was named a leading product liability attorney by Who's Who Legal: The International Who's Who of Business Lawyers and a Life Science Star by LMG Life Sciences.

Ms McDonough is a lecturer in the global health law LLM programme at the Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, DC. Before her legal career, she worked as a clinical pharmacist in a large university teaching hospital and brings her pharmaceutical background to her representation of pharmaceutical, medical device, food, and cosmetics manufacturers in product liability, regulatory and related legal issues.

Ms McDonough is a member of the Food and Drug Law Institute (FDLI) and FDLI finance committee; Institute for Inclusion in the Legal Profession (IILP) and IILP advisory board; American Bar Association (ABA) and ABA food, cosmetics and nutraceuticals section; Personal Care Products Council; The Bar of the District of Columbia; the Missouri Bar; and Kansas City Metropolitan Bar Association, where she served as chair of its public service committee. In that capacity, she co-founded the Kansas City summer law internship programme for high school students.

Ms McDonough served as editor-in-chief of the Kansas Law Review. She earned her LLM in global health law from Georgetown University Law Center. She is a member of the University of Kansas School of Law's alumni board of governors and of the Women's Advisory Council, and serves on the community advisory board of KCUR-FM, a National Public Radio affiliate in Kansas City.