Karen Ballack has 27 years of experience handling tech deals. Clients include Yahoo, Facebook, Vonage and Intel, which tapped her to help on its $16.7 billion acquisition of Altera. She was also on Facebook's much ballyhooed $16 billion purchase of WhatsApp. Outside of her practice, Ballack is a member of Weil's management committee and is on the board and provides pro bono work for The Progeria Research Foundation, which seeks a cure for the fatal genetic disease of accelerated aging in children.

Most valuable career advice you've received?

I am a tech/IP transactional attorney, and one of my mentors early in my career impressed upon me how very important it is to be precise and succinct in drafting documents. The last thing you want is for a deal document that you negotiated and drafted to end up in litigation due to ambiguous language or poor/sloppy drafting.