We’re excited to introduce our 2025 summer associates, Cherita Raines and Soumita Bose. They are joining our talented summer class, bringing their unique perspectives, strong academic backgrounds, and enthusiasm for the law. We’re delighted to have them on board and look forward to working with them over the coming weeks.
Cherita Raines:
Cherita Raines, MD, MPH, an Orlando, Florida native, is a rising 3L at the University of Washington School of Law. She returns to Keller Rohrback as a summer associate in the Complex Litigation Department. Cherita’s path to a career in law has taken a different route than most. She graduated from Emory University with a bachelor’s in chemistry and psychology. She completed her dual MD/MPH degree from Mount Sinai School of Medicine and Harvard School of Public Health. Cherita moved to the Pacific Northwest for her family medicine residency training at the University of Washington. She served King, Pierce, and Snohomish counties as a physician and healthcare executive for over a decade. Although she loved the relationships she built with her patients, she realized she needed to move beyond the exam room to have a larger impact on their health.
Cherita was drawn to KR after an on-campus presentation highlighted the firm’s public health litigation cases, like JUUL youth vaping crisis, the opioid epidemic, and high insulin drug pricing. All of these were issues that she dealt with one-on-one with patients in her office. “It was exciting to see these problems addressed more upstream and with greater impact on a population of people.” Cherita returns to KR thrilled to continue the work she started last summer and to use her vast experience in healthcare to collaborate on new cases.
In her free time, Cherita enjoys spending time with friends, family, and dog sitting.
Soumita Bose:
Soumita Bose is a rising 2L at the University of Washington School of Law. Originally from the Bay Area in California, Soumita has spent the last couple of years in Washington, D.C., and is now in Seattle for law school. With a background rooted in public health and policy, she has completed her master’s in public health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and most recently was a researcher at the Urban Institute. Her research primarily focused on early childhood education, refugee resettlement, and community-engaged participatory research.
Drawn to the law through her research focused on refugee resettlement, Soumita learned more about how the law directly impacts people's lives. Her background further motivated her to think about how the law can have downstream effects on people’s health and well-being. While looking for a summer associate opportunity, Soumita was drawn to KR’s plaintiff-side public health and environmental litigation. Notably, while researching KR, she discovered that one of her first civil procedure readings was a case where KR was involved in suing social media companies for their role in the youth mental health crisis. This connection resonated deeply with her public health interests.
Soumita describes her greatest strength as her dedication, and she strives to do everything she is doing wholeheartedly. In her free time, Soumita enjoys reading, dancing, and learning her family recipes. She also has a deep appreciation for the outdoors and hopes to spend more time outside this summer.