Features Corporate Counsel

Her official title is corporate counsel, but Amanda Auer plays many roles at Lawrence Group a leading design, development and project delivery firm headquartered in St. Louis. “My role changes day to day,” explains Auer. “I’m part developer, part attorney.” Auer is St. Louis local to the core. She grew up in the Gateway City […]

Design professionals applauded a ruling earlier this year, by the Maryland Court of Appeals, upholding a lower court ruling protecting a company against claims for purely economic damages by a contractor with whom it did not have a contractual agreement. This principle, known as the Economic Loss Rule or the Economic Loss Doctrine, was championed […]

As every golfer knows, you’ve got to play by the rules: Where you can drop a second ball after hitting the first into a pond or the woods. How you may address a ball in the bunker. Whether conditions allow for preferred lies. About mulligans: None, at least not while playing for keeps. Joe Nauman […]

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,” […]

Her sole client being North America’s sixth largest coal producer, Jennifer S. Grafton is quick to advocate for the much-maligned energy source whose use has seen a decline over the past five years, but remains necessary if the lights are to stay on after sundown. “I am not a technical person, but I can tell […]

Like many lawyers, Juli Faris Bruce chose the legal path because she was an idealist; she wanted to make the world a better place. While the reality of the legal field—the grind, the competitive edge, the win-lose nature—can break some once-idealistic attorneys, Faris Bruce has found a way to contribute to the greater good. That’s […]

Growing up as the daughter of an attorney, Anna Mechling has had an interest in law for as long as she can remember. An experienced litigator, Mechling’s father imparted two pieces of advice that have long stuck with her. “He said law school teaches you a new way of thinking and he also always told […]

Anthony Yoo compares ChemTreat Inc., an international industrial water treatment company, to a hematologist, a doctor who makes sure a person’s blood is clean and working properly. As Yoo explains it, just as human bodies depend on the composition of the blood circulating through them, industrial equipment and facilities rely on water as their life […]

Every attorney has important learning moments early on that will shape the direction of his senior career. For Arthur Gonzales, that “moment” was a five year-long clerkship in the Ohio Third District Court of Appeals where he worked on cases as diverse as complex business litigation, drug trafficking and homicides with death penalty sentencing. “I […]

“Struggling is hard because you never know what’s at the end of the tunnel,” the late, great comic Don Rickles used to say. One of his fans, Joseph Dennis, might respond that with sufficient preparation and teamwork the struggle is lessened, and what awaits at tunnel’s end can be the most tangible of accomplishments. Such […]