Fall 2025

United States Representative Ro Khanna (D-Calif) was an attorney at Munger, Tolles & Olson from 2002 to 2004. Now serving his fifth term in Congress, Khanna is considered a leading progressive voice in the U.S. House of Representatives. He serves as vice chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus; on the House Armed Services Committee as ranking member of the Subcommittee on Cyber, Innovative Technologies and Information Systems; a member of the Select Committee on the Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party; and on the Oversight and Accountability Committee. 

MTO Partner Rohit Singla interviewed Ro about his path to public service, lessons he learned from his time at MTO and advice for lawyers to get engaged in civic life. 

What early experiences or influences most shaped your approach to leadership and to public policy? 

It’s [a] cliché to say loss is a teacher. But for me, my two initial election losses were profound in shaping my leadership. My second loss to [incumbent Rep.] Mike Honda [in the 2014 general election] was especially important. I thought I was this hotshot who had served in the Obama administration, and I came out with all my tech leader endorsements on day one. After he beat me, Honda said, “Well, I knew I had you beat the day you did that … because I came out on the same day with all my PTA leaders’ endorsements. There are a lot more PTA leaders than there are tech leaders.” 

After losing, I focused much less on getting on the front page of the New York Times and Time magazine. I met with people in the community, listened to them and understood their concerns — and then I won.  

The first loss [to former Rep. Tom Lantos in 2004] was very idealistic. I was against the war in Iraq. I was against the Patriot Act. But I remember [former Rep.] Tom Lantos saying to me, “You don’t just pick up and run for Congress unless you’re a celebrity or a movie star.” [This was pre-Trump.] Politics is an organic process. You have to build community.  

Both of those losses shaped my appreciation for people who are out of the system. They gave me a sense of building community and shaped me into the public servant that I am today. 

As you think about this moment in our history, what do you see as the most urgent challenges and the greatest opportunities for Congress? 

The most urgent challenge is to stand up in any possible way for constitutional democracy. 

The deeper challenge is to present an alternative. President Donald Trump spoke to the economic pain that a lot of people have. He spoke to a despair, a nihilism, a sense of destruction. For many people, the American dream simply seems out of reach. The Wall Street Journal has a sobering statistic — 70% of Americans no longer believe in the American dream.  

My view is that the Democratic Party must go to people who feel left out and offer an alternative about how we see them, how we respect them, how we understand their anger and how we’re offering a better path forward in addressing their concerns. The only way to defeat Trumpism is to defeat the underlying cynicism, anger and despair that animate it. 

What are your top priorities right now in your agenda? 

You’re speaking to me before the Epstein press conference. So this week, it’s restoring trust in government. This is something that has resonated with Americans across the ideological spectrum. I’m hoping we will be able to force a vote on this

Long term, I’m working for economic patriotism. The Democratic Party stands for bridging the economic divides that are tearing this country apart. Our highest priority is the economic success of every family and community in America.  

I’ve called for the creation of a White House Economic Development Council and the mobilization of the country’s private sector to look at communities with an eye toward funneling private capital where [it’s] needed — manufacturing, health care jobs, trade schools and even AI academies that will help people get technology jobs. The second aspect of economic patriotism is lowering costs — addressing the obscene costs of child care, education, health care and housing to be able to make the American dream possible again. 

How do you find common ground today in this sort of very dividable environment? 

I’m a fighter for principles I believe in, but I try not to personalize the attacks on people’s character. I approach things with civility and dialogue, while not compromising my ground on fighting for what I believe. And with that approach, I look for areas of intersection.  

Reflecting on your time at MTO specifically, what skills or experiences from that time have proven most valuable to you? 

I remember Name Partner Ron Olson coming into my office when I was a new associate and having a 30-minute chat about family and how we were both there to do the same thing — work for our clients. It was a mark of his leadership that he believed every person had value, could contribute and should be treated with respect. I’ve tried to do that with people on my own team.  

The second thing I learned was to be very diligent. I came into MTO having read a tremendous amount of philosophy and literature and thinking about the big questions, but I never really cared whether there was a comma or a period missing or whether things were formatted correctly or if I took notes diligently. But the details and execution matter, especially in government and in campaigns. 

I also appreciated that when I left the firm to run for office, people at MTO were supportive.  

Many of our alumni are looking for ways to contribute meaningfully in civic life. What advice do you have for people, especially in this time? 

We need you. We’re going to need everyone. If, hopefully, we have a Democratic president, we’re going to need people across this country to help rebuild this government. 

Before we take back the White House, there are urgent things to do. First, ensuring that the midterm elections are fair and free, that people aren’t being kicked off the voting rolls, that you don’t have interference and intimidation at polling places. Second, how can you help people who are being denied due process and deported? We have enormous need for people to stand up for the violations of the Constitution that this president is engaged in daily. Many of our lawyers — especially talented lawyers at places like Munger, Tolles & Olson — need to be engaged.  

There are folks who just say, “The pendulum is going to swing back. Let me put my head under the table. I don’t want to incur Trump’s wrath. I don’t want him to tweet against me. I don’t want my company to be affected.” In this country’s history, the pendulum does swing, but it doesn’t swing automatically.  

Think about where you can take a stand, get involved, speak up and be engaged. This is a time when we need a lot of people in the private sector to dedicate a part of themselves to the public good. 

How do you sustain a sense of optimism and purpose? 

I’m very hopeful about the country. Some people look at [former Vice President] Kamala Harris and they say she lost seven swing states. I was disappointed. But if you told me when I was growing up that an Indian American-African American woman would get 48 percent of the vote, I would have said you’re crazy. 

America is progressing despite ourselves. We are becoming a more inclusive, pluralistic, cohesive, multiracial democracy. I have great belief in this country’s resilience and goodness. If you have a story like mine, you can’t help but have that faith in the country.  

Allyson Bennett was an associate at Munger, Tolles & Olson in Los Angeles from 2015 until 2018. In September 2024, she was tapped by OpenAI to serve as lead counsel for its Artificial Intelligence Research organization. In this conversation with MTO Partner Miriam Kim, Ally talks about how an unexpected landing in intellectual property law paved her career path — and her key position at what is arguably one of the country’s most high-profile companies. 

Tell us about your background, what brought you to MTO and what you’ve been doing since. 

I went to Yale Law School and held two clerkships [U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York]. I was a summer associate at MTO and came back as an associate. MTO was always on my radar because one of my best friends is former Partner Brad Phillips’ daughter. He was always talking about this magical place where he worked where people were nice, thought about hard issues and had leanly staffed teams. That sounded amazing.  

While at MTO, I was working mostly on entertainment and copyright matters. When I left, I went to a small IP litigation boutique called Durie Tangri, still doing mostly copyright litigation. I became a partner there. Then that litigation boutique merged with Morrison & Foerster. 

When you were at Morrison & Foerster, were you already doing work for OpenAI’s research team? 

Durie Tangri and then Morrison & Foerster represented OpenAI in copyright litigation, as well as other AI companies. I had been doing work for OpenAI for a while, and then, when this role opened up, they reached out to me. 

For those who might not be AI enthusiasts, can you explain what the AI research team is at OpenAI? 

OpenAI is a really interesting place because the research is the product in a lot of ways. A lot of companies have an R&D phase and a product phase. Here, one of our primary selling points is the models themselves. So our research teams conceive of “What should the model do?” and “What should the architecture be?” They train the model. I’m advising on that side of things — we’re on the frontier of model training and development. 

What does a typical day look like for you in that role? 

There is no typical day — it’s one of the things I love about my role. A lot of the teams I’m advising are just doing science. And the thing about science is you never know exactly where it’s going to take you. 

But with the types of issues I’m looking at — privacy and copyright issues — there are lots of new legal frameworks coming on board for AI, like the EU AI Act and new legislation in California. I’m advising the teams on those during the entire model life cycle, from conception of “What would we like this new model to do?” through “What are we training on?” through launch. 

While training the models and doing all that research, I’m sure you’re dealing with a lot of ethical and regulatory limits and uncertainties. How are you navigating those issues? 

AI is similar to every new technology in that you’re advising your clients based on a combination of old rules that were written for old technology and trying to reason by analogy to your new technology about how they might apply to you. We’re also dealing with all these new legal frameworks that have never been interpreted before.  

In some ways, it’s what I’ve been doing for my whole career. At MTO, I was advising on what we called “new media.”  

Are there other matters you worked on at MTO involving emerging issues and technologies where there wasn’t a clear answer? 

That’s most of what I did at MTO. I started off working with Anjan Choudhury on all his entertainment cases. He was really responsible for my whole career in a way because I didn’t take IP in law school and had never touched copyright issues. He pulled me into his entertainment cases. At the time, those cases were all about issues like “How do these old contracts apply to these new monetization models?” You have contracts written with traditional broadcast television in mind. How are we applying them to these very new distribution models for television and movies? 

Then I started working with Kelly Klaus on a lot of plaintiff-side copyright lawsuits about new technology and new ways of distributing content — mostly copyright based — which is similar to what I’m doing now, just on the technology side. 

Now that you’ve counseled the leading AI company, both as an outside lawyer and now as an in-house lawyer, do you have any advice for how we should be viewing generative AI in our practice? 

My first piece of advice is always “Take a deep breath. It’s not as scary as it seems.” As I said before, we’ve all been dealing with new technology for a long time.  

Second is to use it appropriately. There are lots of ways to build AI into your professional workflows, if that’s allowed by your firm policies and the courts you’re in front of or your personal workflows. I used our products to plan my vacation to Japan. But the best way to understand what the legal issues are with AI is to understand what it can and cannot do. And the only way to do that is to use it, but responsibly.  

Third is to read about what’s going on. Most of the major AI developers put out a lot of research. There’s more public information about how this technology works than is typical because these companies, including ours, are research labs.  

In terms of what I look for in outside counsel — the number of lawyers who have talked to me who have no idea about what our products do is astounding. This isn’t new. You wouldn’t show up to a meeting with a company and have no idea what they do or how their tech works. It’s the same for AI. 

What advice do you have for young lawyers? 

What you think you want to do may or may not be what you actually do. I ended up in my career by accident. I did not take copyright in law school; I just knew that I wanted to work with Anjan, and that’s what he did. So I did it, and it was amazing. And now here I am. You might love something that is not even on your radar, so keep an open mind. No one is going to plan your career for you, so be proactive and go after what you want.  

Who you’re working with is often more important than what you’re working on. When I first started out, before I sent anything to Kelly, I would send it to Rose Ehler. She was a little bit more senior than I, and she would read it and then she would very kindly tell me why it was terrible and how she would change it before it should go to Kelly. I learned so much from her. Find those mentors. They will make you a better lawyer. Even if it is not exactly what you want to do, you will be thankful for them throughout your career. 

What advice do you have for the firm? 

Continue to hire the best people you can find. Often the senior partners are great, but they’re not the ones doing most of the work. If the firm doesn’t have a deep bench, I can’t keep working with them. So find the best junior lawyers you can, develop them and retain them.