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Remembering When Being Corporate Counsel Wasn't Cool
Big firm frustration leads Susan J. Hackett to work as corporate lawyer
Fulton County Daily Report
September 05, 2008
Association of Corporate Counsel's Susan Hackett
Truth be told, Susan J. Hackett -- general counsel of the Association of Corporate Counsel in Washington -- became an in-house lawyer because she wasn't happy in the firm where she went to work right out of law school.
"I felt like a fish out of water," she recalled. "It didn't click."
So she began searching for a safe place to land while she figured out what she wanted to do. "I saw a posting, and I took a job," she said. "I came here because I didn't know what else to do."
This time, it clicked.
That was nearly 20 years ago. Now the national organization's most senior staff member, Hackett has witnessed a transformation in the stature and number of corporate attorneys.
When she started with ACC, "No one had ever heard of us," she said. "We were a couple of years old and we didn't have anything to offer. My job was to figure out how to develop the association's agenda."
Founded in 1982, the ACC now has 24,000 members representing more than 10,500 business organizations spread among 45 chapters in 80 countries. The organization provides members with advocacy, networks, continuing legal education and professional resources targeting the needs of in-house lawyers.
"I was corporate counsel when corporate counsel wasn't cool," Hackett said. "Now corporate counsel are the darlings of the bar and everybody wants to have them at their program. It's part of the meteoric rise of the in-house lawyer."
Her current projects with the ACC include:
• ACC's advocacy efforts, including lobbying to protect the corporate attorney-client privilege as well as development of in-house legal ethics and professionalism resources; testimony and representation before decision-making authorities; in-house corporate responsibility initiatives and post-Enron-related attorney conduct regulations.
• ACC's "Value Challenge" initiative, which seeks to revolutionize the relationship between in-house and outside counsel by helping them connect costs to values.
• Corporate pro bono and diversity initiatives, including diversity pipeline projects.
• The provision of legal services and counseling to the ACC and its board.
• The development of new strategic resources benefiting general counsel and the ACC's increasingly global membership.
After 20 years in the position, Hackett said she feels "like the old lady of the bar," even though she is only 47.
But she has definitely found her niche.
• Title: Senior vice president and general counsel • Company: Association of Corporate Counsel • Age: 47 • Education: B.A., political philosophy and international relations, James Madison College at Michigan State University, 1983; J.D., University of Michigan Law School, 1986. • Personal: Married to Richard E. Hagerty, a commercial litigator and partner at Troutman Sanders' office in Tysons Corner, Va. Two daughters, ages 9 and 6. • Professional: Transactional work at Patton Boggs, a large Washington law firm. Moved to the ACC in 1989. • Memberships: Board of directors of Street Law Inc., former member of board of Equal Justice Works and the Minority Corporate Counsel Association. Has served as appointed liaison to several American Bar Association presidential commissions and task forces, including: the Commission on the Multijurisdictional Practice of Law, the Commission on Billable Hours, the Joint Committee on Lawyer Regulation/Standing Committee on Ethics, the ABA Task Force on Sarbanes-Oxley Section 307, the Attorney-Client Privilege Task Force, the Commission on Women in the Profession and the Minority Counsel Program. Also has served on the advisory board of the Georgetown Law School's Journal of Legal Ethics. • Professional activities: Lectures regularly before a variety of legal audiences and has authored articles on professional and managerial topics for ACC Docket, Litigation, Business Law Today Law Firm Inc., Legal Times, Corporate Counsel and The National Law Journal. |
