Celia is a lawyer (Universidad Torcuato Di Tella – UTDT, Valedictorian), Intellectual Property LLM (Universidad Austral, with honors) and Master in the Science of Law (JSM, Stanford University). She specializes in designing and executing transnational IP protection strategies; in drafting and revising IP contracts, licenses and confidentiality agreements; and in executing domain name disputes in Argentina and before the WIPO. She is currently a partner at Lerman & Szlak, a law firm she founded that is based out of Buenos Aires, Argentina.

She has excelled in research and legal consulting in Intellectual Property, as WIPO/WTO selected professor and as Visiting IP Scholar at Columbia University. She received a Fulbright Scholarship to pursue her studies at Stanford, where she wrote her empirical thesis on Patent Strategies of Technology Startups with distinction, supervised by Mark Lemley. She is currently a lecturer at UTDT, where she teaches IP Aspects of Law & Startups, and directs the Law and Innovation Lab and the Data Protection Course in Executive Legal Education.

Celia is a member of the California Bar Association as well as the Buenos Aires Bar Association. She is also a member of the Emerging Issues Committee at INTA. She is an IP agent and leads the IP department at Lerman & Szlak, combining academic leadership with specialized professional practice.

Celia was inspired to start Foreign Lawyers Bar Exam in order to help foreigners navigate the stressful American bar admissions process. When she sat for the California bar in the summer of 2015, she felt as though there was a lack of resources tailored for her and her foreign colleagues. In creating the FLBE Program, she hopes that foreigners will now be armed with all of the knowledge, best-practices, and advice they need to walk into their testing site on exam day with confidence in their preparation and self-assurance that they will soon lead successful careers as bar-qualified international lawyers.