Features October 2018

The daily duties of an in-house counsel are often described as a game of chess, but what intellectual property (IP) expert William Morris confronts is more like the ancient Chinese board game Go: three times the number of squares, 10 times the tiles and what feel like endless options at every turn. Between the reams […]

For sports fans around the world, the mobile-phone revolution has ushered in a new age of instant-update convenience. Even if you forgot to DVR the big game, second-by-second stats and scores are never more than a swipe or two away, whether you’re waiting for coffee or headed to a friend’s for dinner—so long as you’re […]

Four countries, each with their own unique culture and corporate environment. Seventeen production plants churning out widgets and wares by the ton: medical devices, communications networks, industrial and automotive equipment, IT, electronic systems, clean technology, the list goes on. Nineteen thousand employees—more than Lowe’s or Charles Schwab, and nearly twice as many as Facebook. And […]

Ask Deb Steiner what inspired her to become a lawyer, and you’ll get a response quite different from the range of clichéd answers you’re used to hearing. In fact, she was initially turned off by the idea; a devout Anabaptist, the career path felt contrary to the values she espoused. But she couldn’t shake the […]

The grind begins at home, scheduling the day’s appointments and following up on overnight emails and requests from international clients across different messaging platforms. Upon arriving at Red Spark’s offices, she’s back to juggling intellectual property (IP) issues—along with contracts and compliance—for one of the company’s flagship marketing platforms, with a chorus of calls and […]

We’ve all known someone suffering from a rare condition or disease—if not a friend or family member, then someone a mere degree away. For most, such awareness brings with it a sense of helplessness; the sinking feeling there’s nothing you can personally do to improve their lives. Greg Pate can sleep a little easier. As the […]

It’s a billion-dollar-plus industry, facilities maintenance and management, and NEST has been garnering an incrementally bigger piece of the turf since the company’s 1994 founding in Gloucester City, New Jersey, just across the Walt Whitman Bridge from Philadelphia. “No marquee projects like a big bridge,” Philipp Kaeferle, NEST’s congenial general counsel, tells Vanguard in late […]

If your college-age daughter told you she planned to spend Christmas in a slum in India as part of her studies, you’d be forgiven some nervous dissuasion. Jamie Cox didn’t simply encourage daughter Ann’s altruistic impulse (and wanderlust); he tagged along for the ride. What he found on the other side, amid cacophony and swirling […]

Mark DiGesu has always considered himself more of a chess guy than a checkers guy. He’s drawn to the cerebral nature of the classic strategy game that has transfixed and confounded players for centuries, and that same quality attracted him to the law. Particularly as an in-house lawyer, he says one must be thoughtful, plan […]

As a law student, Fernando Barrera was focused, driven and dedicated. But he was, and still is, a man of few words, so he had his doubts about pursuing the legal profession. “I did not see myself as the kind of person who was always arguing,” he says. Then, one day, a professor’s words helped […]