[2] She worked for Senator Clifford P. Hansen, whom she credits with inspiring her interest in the legal profession.

McKeown was the first female partner with the law firm of Perkins Coie in Seattle and Washington, D.C.[3] McKeown specialized in intellectual property, antitrust, trade regulation, and complex litigation, representing clients like Boeing, Nintendo, Amazon, and Citicorp.

[3][5] Selected publications include: "The Lost Sanctuary: Examining Sex Trafficking Through the Lens of Ah Sou" (Cornell Journal of International Law, 2008);[6] "Happy Birthday Statute of Anne: The Dance Between the Courts and Congress" (Berkeley Technology Law Journal, 2010);[7] "To Judge or Not to Judge: Transparency and Recusal in the Federal System" (The Review of Litigation, 2011);[8] "The Internet and the Constitution: A Selective Retrospective" (Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts, 2014);[9] "Culinary Ambiguity: A Canonical Approach to Deciphering Menus" (Harvard Journal on Legislation, 2014);[10] "Beginning with Brown: Springboard for Gender Equality and Social Change" (San Diego Law Review, Fall 2015);[11] "The ABA Rule of Law Initiative: Celebrating 25 Years of Global Initiatives" (Michigan Journal of International Law, 2018);[12] "The Nineteenth Amendment Centennial Cookbook: 100 Recipes for 100 Years" (ABA 2019);[13] "My Mother Made Me Do It: A Short History of the Nineteenth Amendment" (Litigation, 2020);[14] "The Judiciary Steps Up to the Workplace Challenge" (Northwestern University Law Review, 2021);[15] and "Politics and Judicial Ethics: A Historical Perspective" (Yale Law Journal Forum, 2021).

[17] On March 29, 1996, President Bill Clinton nominated McKeown for a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and then renominated her on January 7, 1997.

[2] On January 12, 2022, McKeown announced that she would assume senior status upon the confirmation of her successor.

[3] McKeown served as a member of the ABA Commission to redraft the Model Code of Judicial Ethics.

Between December 2014 and August 2020, McKeown sat on an en banc panel 29 times.

[24] She served as past chair of the White House Fellows Foundation[44] and the Georgetown Law School Board of Visitors.

McKeown has chaired the American Bar Association’s Rule of Law Initiative and is a senior advisor.

[50] In 2022, McKeown published a nonfiction book, Citizen Justice: The Environmental Legacy of William O.