Features July 2017

Fitting in with corporate culture is a key to success anywhere, especially at a company that prides itself on outfitting over 5 million people a day with practical and attractive uniforms that suit their lines of work. Maybe it’s the dark pants and brightly colored polo shirts you see on the young people behind the […]

Bob Koch—that’s Koch as in Cook, not Coke—never lacked for intellectual curiosity, and he had the resume to prove it, when Rudolph Technologies Inc. was looking for a general counsel in the spring of 2003. It wasn’t just legal acumen that Rudolph wanted; someone also well-versed in business would have an edge. Even more so […]

Manhattan’s minimalist, all-glass, 978-foot-tall 4 World Trade Center is outstanding in its own right, but for many, the building’s elevators steal the show. Imagine this: you enter a building, tap your ID card on a turnstile and as it opens, it tells you which of 34 elevators to get in. An algorithm has determined which […]

As a child growing up in the suburbs of Toronto, Canada, Burt Fealing always believed the corporate attorney was the “James Bond” of the business world. “These were the individuals who were often flown into a location, meeting in a secret room and structuring the transactions that were helping to shape and define the world,” […]

When Julie Jacobs joined the legal staff of America Online, better known as AOL, in 2000, the internet pioneer seemed in need of the kind of jolt that an enthusiastic tech- and business-savvy person could offer. Seventeen years later, as executive vice president and general counsel, Jacobs seems to have more than justified the faith […]

In 2014, when Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner slashed funding for the state’s public colleges and universities, Chicago State University (CSU), which serves approximately 7,000 students, primarily from the city’s South Side, found itself on the brink of closure. In an attempt to keep the university’s doors open, Patrick Cage found himself in the unenviable position […]

Patricia Levy is the first to admit that her career moves were not planned, not exactly. Early on, Levy knew she wanted to be a lawyer, and after law school she thought she’d found her place as a corporate attorney in a law firm. Thirty-two years later, giving an interview from her office with DRW, […]

There was a time when John Spiegleman expended his legal and real estate expertise on behalf of companies that managed lavish hotels, high-end apartments, urban retail buildings and the lushest golf courses. Nowadays, as executive vice president and general counsel of Denver-based DCT Industrial Trust (NYSE:DCT), he’s more likely to apply his know-how to developing, […]

The oil and gas business is risky. Very risky. There’s geological and mechanical risk associated with locating and extracting hydrocarbons from thousands of feet below the Earth’s surface. And then there’s price risk. Global economies, OPEC decisions, geopolitical events—particularly those in already unstable areas like the Middle East—and even the weather, can all dramatically impact […]

By any metric, Sue Lee is an achiever. Harvard educated as an undergrad and law student, the Taiwanese-born Lee has served as general counsel, senior vice president and corporate secretary of Entegris Inc. in Billerica, Massachusetts, since the spring of 2016. Just 40, she’s been general counsel at two other companies and held high positions […]