From 2005 to 2014 she was a partner at Nutter McClennen & Fish where she represented individuals and corporations in criminal and civil proceedings primarily before Federal Courts.

Francis Salemme (aka "Cadillac Frank") and co-defendant Paul Weadick were convicted of the murder of 43-year-old Steven A. DiSarro, who disappeared in May 1993.

Burroughs also presided over a July 2020 lawsuit filed by Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) that sought to halt an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) policy that required international students in the United States on F-1 visas to depart the country if they would not be attending in-person classes during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Judge Burroughs announced that the Trump administration had agreed to reverse the policy during a July 14, 2020 hearing in her Boston courtroom.

[11] In December 2020, Burroughs presided over a lawsuit brought by five Republicans who lost state and federal legislative races in Massachusetts and sought to overturn the election results.

In re Intuniv Antitrust Litigation concerned allegedly anticompetitive agreements between drug makers Shire and Actavis purportedly aimed at charging supracompetitive prices for an ADHD medication.

Judge Burroughs dismissed the complaints against the chocolate bar companies in January 2019,[15] a decision upheld by the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in June 2020.