Law360, New York ( July 17, 2013, 4:28 PM EDT) -- Karen C. McConnell is a partner in Ballard Spahr LLP's Phoenix office and chairwoman of the firm's national M&A practice group. Her entire career has been spent as a business lawyer, focusing on mergers and acquisitions, securities and general corporate law. Her clients, many of whom she has worked with for more than a decade, include large public companies as well as smaller startup companies. She also works with a number of high-net-worth individuals and family offices that devote a portion of their wealth to encouraging new business ventures. In recent years, much of McConnell's time has been spent representing financial investors on a wide range of private equity and venture capital transactions. The variety of her clients has meant a constant, varied and exciting deal flow. She says she stopped counting the number of deals she had done a few years ago when it topped 300, though she is looking forward to doing many more....