When a recruiter came calling for Javier Rubinstein, a litigation partner at Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw’s Chicago office, he hesitated. He loved being in the courtroom and handling international arbitrations, he says. But the more he thought about the job — general counsel of accounting giant PriceWaterhouseCoopers — the more he liked it. “My passion is doing international work,” he says, “and the opportunity to be global general counsel of a network that spans 148 countries — it’s the ultimate global position.”
The other incentive to take the job, Rubinstein says, is the shift in focus. In arbitration matters, his focus was retrospective. He primarily tried to resolve disputes after they emerged. Now his responsibility is not only to deal with legal issues after the fact, but to anticipate and find ways to avoid them in the first place. He’ll be looking at a myriad of issues through both a legal and a business lens.
