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Cover story
Go Ahead, Make His Day
Hewlett-Packard’s general counsel says he’s really pleased with his department’s program to hire and train young lawyers. So why is he hoping he loses one? By david Hechler
HP’s general counsel, John Schultz
Nearly five years ago, Hewlett-Packard Co.’s law
department began hiring and training lawyers right out of law school. The tech giant has lured top talent from some of the nation’s best law schools. The new recruits have impressed their colleagues, and they also seem pleased with the match. The lawyer who oversees the program touts an 85 percent retention rate. Not many companies have embraced this model, but HP seems very happy with the results. But the company’s general counsel says he’d like to see that number dip just a bit. His fondest wish for the program, says John Schultz, is that a big law firm hires away one of his budding young stars. “That’s what I wait and hope for,” he says. Say what? It sounds like Schultz is issuing a nice guy’s version of Dirty Harry’s throw-down: “Go ahead, make my day.” But he isn’t kidding, and he’s not saying this to be provocative. His company’s ambition is to create a training program the equal of any law firm’s, and he’ll know they’ve succeeded when a law firm hires away someone who’s been through it. Schultz has a lot riding on the program’s success. He wasn’t the GC when it launched, but he had as much to do with its creation as anybody. The idea was born in 2008, when Schultz, who was a litigation partner at Mor-
Photography By Timothy Archibald
Corporate Counsel ❘ march 2015
45
Cover story
gan, Lewis & Bockius, was offered the job of HP’s litigation chief by Michael Holston, his former partner at the firm who had taken over as the company’s general counsel the previous year. Schultz wasn’t sure he wanted to give up his practice, but he thought the move would be exciting if the department he joined decided to bring some of its litigation in-house. Doing that, he reasoned, would require changing the way HP recruited and trained lawyers. Holston was enthusiastic about the idea, Shultz says, and the economy presented a golden opportunity. When the financial crisis hit, law firms cut back. Some were forced to withdraw offers they’d made to graduating law school students. That got Schultz and company thinking: Rather than bring in associates from firms who had acquired some legal skills but knew nothing about the company, why not hire law students and train them directly? A number of companies have tried this over the years. The one that’s talked it up the most (and is one of the few still doing it) is IBM [“The Art of Hiring,” May 2014]. HP began recruiting 3Ls in 2009, and the following fall brought in its first group of four. One of them was Gail Su, who was recruited from Harvard Law. Su had summered for two law firms, and had learned a lot from each experience. She’d done corporate work for Jones Day in Tokyo her first summer, and IP litigation out of Weil, Gotshal & Manges’ Silicon Valley office the next. She was not interested in IP litigation, which seemed largely “fighting about old patents,” she says. She loved transactions and technology, and she preferred to look forward: She wanted to help companies find new markets. But most of that work is now done in-house. She figured she’d have to endure five to seven years at a firm and then transition into a small company until she could work her way up to a larger one. When she learned of HP’s new program, she jumped at the chance to interview for a job. What she discovered in Palo Alto was a company that was a lot more flexible than what she’d found at big law firms. Even
46
march 2015 ❘ Corporate Counsel
Cover story
though the law department boasts more than 500 attorneys worldwide, they listened to the new lawyers and were responsive. The program was something of a work in progress, and it is still being tweaked. But for her it has more than delivered. After a first year dominated by classes in skills—nego-
tiation, public speaking, contract drafting, patent writing—she found herself working on deals. At first they were small, but from the beginning they were hers. “I’m responsible for my deal,” she says. “My mistakes are my own. No one is monitoring every step.” There was plenty of help, and management was
HP’s program strives to match the lawyers’ interests and its needs. It tells them, “Just raise your hand.” —Bruce ives
“I’m responsible for my deal. My mistakes are my own. No one is monitoring every step.” —Gail Su
there to make sure there were no disasters. But she’s been able to work on deals and learn from experience, and she’s relished that. The program has been up and run-
ning for five years now. This seemed like a good time to see how it’s going. There have been changes during that
time. In 2012, after Schultz was named general counsel, HP fine-tuned the program. The first year still features classroom instruction on skills, along with on-the-job training. But the department initiated three formal tracks for the new hires: litigation, patent prosecution and transactions. And it modified its hiring practices, accord-
ing to Bruce Ives, manager of the new attorney program. Previously it had hired the “best available athletes,” says Ives, analogizing to sports teams that draft players for talent rather than the positions they play. Now the department also gauges candidates’ interests and abilities (as well as the company’s future needs) when they select six lawyers each year. There have been other tweaks. To compete against the big law firms, the department moved up the recruiting cycle and now brings in 2Ls for a summer program. It boosted starting salaries to $150,000 plus bonuses for first-years—competitive with the top firms. The program also invites the young lawyers to spend at last two weeks working in one of the company’s offices abroad, to acquaint them with the global business. The most recent development occurred last September, when Schultz hired another Morgan Lewis litigation partner to help bring more litigation in-house. Part of Kristofor Henning’s job is managing a group of seven young litigators (who represent a third of the 21 young lawyers currently in the program). They are based in Texas, Virginia, California and Pennsylvania (where Henning is also based). Henning has had to create a formal curriculum on the fly, but like the transaction training, it will entail course work (depositions, oral advocacy, legal writing and the like) along with actually litigating cases, he says. Much of the litigating will likely be single-plaintiff employment cases, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission charges and other prelitigation matters. But Henning emphasizes that “it will not be limited by subject matter.” He also expects that his lawyers will avail themselves of moot court opportunities mounted by law firms with which the company has relationships, such as Morgan Lewis and Dechert [“Training by Trial,” January]. One of his young litigators is Angela Briggs, who is also based in the company’s headquarters in Palo Alto. Briggs went to the University of Pennsylvania Law School, John Schultz’s alma mater, and she was one of the last group of students he inter-
Corporate Counsel ❘ march 2015
47
Cover story
viewed in 2011 as HP’s litigation chief (as GC, he no longer has time). She’s two classes behind Gail Su, and on a different track, but Briggs shares the same enthusiasms. Schultz had told Briggs during her interview that HP’s young lawyers control their cases. That’s one of the things that “definitely piqued my interest,” she remembers. And it’s been one of the highlights of her experience at the company, she says: “They really allow you to own the cases you’re assigned.” Briggs has a broad range of responsibilities. She drafts documents, advises internal clients, manages outside counsel—and litigates cases. She and Reuben Rodriguez, a lawyer a year ahead of her, drafted a summary judgment motion in an employment case and then were permitted to argue it themselves last July. The judge granted the motion on the spot. Though it’s now on appeal, Briggs says: “It was definitely a confidence booster for me to work on a case from beginning to end and see it successfully resolved.” What Kris Henning has brought to the program is consistency and a sense of solidarity, Briggs says. Before he arrived, the litigators would often seek feedback from a variety of outside and internal counsel. What was missing was a consistent process. Now most of the feedback comes from Henning, who has helped the litigators feel part of a team despite their geographic discontinuity, Briggs says.
“It was definitely a confidence booster for me to work on a case from beginning to end and see it successfully resolved.” —angela briggs
SPEED AND ACCURACY COME STANDARD. THE BUSINESS LAW AND TRANSACTIONAL SOLUTIONS FROM THOMSON REUTERS CAN HELP YOU WORK SMARTER AND FASTER.
But how does all this training
stack up against the preparation that young lawyers get from law firms? Dan Cooperman is skeptical about the model Schultz has established. Now of counsel at DLA Piper, Cooperman has been in both worlds. After 14 years at McCutchen, Doyle, Brown & Enersen, he was the general counsel at Oracle Corp. for 10 years and then the GC at Apple Inc. for two. “I think it’s a great thing for the legal department,” Cooperman says. But he fears “it’s a bad idea for the lawyer.” The law firm environment offers a rich learning environment, Cooperman argues. Lawyers can learn a great
48
march 2015 ❘ Corporate Counsel
deal from working with different companies in different industries with different cultures and management teams. If you work at a company, on the other hand, you experience only one. Though law firms no longer offer young lawyers rotations to sample different areas of the law, Cooperman continues, “at least you have colleagues giving presentations.” A
general counsel can bring in outside lawyers to try to replicate these offerings, of course, as Cooperman did when he was a GC, “but you’re not living with people who are doing that all the time, which limits your learning.” It’s conceivable, he allows, that a very large legal department may have the breadth of opportunities and resources to train lawyers in a way
For corporate legal departments, there’s a better way to get the job done right while getting it done faster–one that doesn’t sacrifice performance, but rather enhances it. The business law and transactional solutions from Thomson Reuters integrate our unrivaled content, expertise and technologies to enable you to protect documents from errors and speed up the review process; get the most current forms, checklists and clauses; find up-to-the-minute insights and analysis; track companies, news and market trends; and conduct faster, smarter research. And all of it is designed to work together so you can work more productively, confidently and intelligently than ever before. Help your corporate law department put more speed and accuracy into every task at legalsolutions.thomsonreuters.com/CorporateTransactional.
© 2014 Thomson Reuters L-392318/7-14 Thomson Reuters and the Kinesis logo are trademarks of Thomson Reuters.
Cover story
that’s comparable to what they would receive at a large firm. Given its size and global reach, HP may have the tools to do that, but not too many others are likely to, he concludes. Robert Bostrom tends to agree. Bostrom is now general counsel of Abercrombie & Fitch. He was once the managing partner at Winston & Strawn’s New York office, where he recruited and hired lawyers before
available to mentor, and there’s a portfolio of work for junior lawyers to pick up, “I don’t see any theoretical reason why it couldn’t work,” she says. Training lawyers—especially litigators—“is a challenge across the profession,” she says. And that includes law firms. There are fewer and fewer trials, and there’s more and more at stake. She can easily imagine that a skilled litigator with experience in
HP is aiming for a talent process “that combines some of the good elements of what law firms do” with “some of the really good things that companies do.” —john schultz leaving to become general counsel of Freddie Mac. So he, too, has experienced both worlds. If a company has the infrastructure and the time to train its lawyers the right way, HP’s approach “could be valuable,” Bostrom says. But training is hard. If lawyers aren’t specifically assigned the responsibility, it becomes “very ad hoc,” he says. It’s a lot easier when new lawyers arrive with “a core base of knowledge,” like the kind they acquire at a law firm. Elizabeth Sacksteder offers a more positive view. “I’m intrigued,” she says of Schultz’s model—particularly the litigation track. Sacksteder is a litigation partner at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. She’s been a litigation chief at Citigroup Inc. and, before that, The Hartford Financial Services Group Inc., where she sometimes argued motions while managing litigation (which she doesn’t recommend, by the way). Not many companies have the resources to do what HP is doing. But if senior lawyers are
50
march 2015 ❘ Corporate Counsel
repetitive, predictable work would be attractive to a boutique or a regional firm. As for a large firm, it would likely depend on special expertise. A lawyer with deal or patent or litigation skill, who has worked at a high-tech company, where change is rapid, or in a regulated industry, where new regs are constant, could develop the expertise, Sacksteder suggests, that is desirable to a big firm. HP’s legal managers aren’t push-
ing their young lawyers onto a fast track. In fact, what may be the best feature of the department’s program is the patience the managers demonstrate. The lawyers aren’t rushed. The expectation is that most will be ready to “graduate” after four years. No pomp and circumstance is required. Gail Su was told sometime around her four-year anniversary that she’d graduated. “On-the-job training” had dropped the training wheels. Su has continued to do deals—only her role
as well as the deals have grown larger. For others, however, “graduating” also means that they have options. Some will manage outside counsel. Some may continue to try cases, or work for a business unit. Some may ask to do something new, or move to a far-flung location. As Bruce Ives, the program coordinator, tells them, “Just raise your hand.” The department strives to find a match between their interests and the company’s needs, he adds. It seems to be going the way Schultz imagined it. He recognized from the beginning that one of his company’s big advantages was scale. His model wouldn’t work for many other companies, he acknowledges, and it may never be widely adopted. But he thinks it’s working for them. “What we’re trying to do at HP is have a talent process that combines some of the good elements of what law firms do,” he says, “while retaining and augmenting some of the really good things that companies do.” He thinks their training gives lawyers the best of both. But Schultz also knows that it’s not the conventional wisdom, and he’s got some selling to do. “Understandably,” he continues, “there are still folks with doubts about whether it’s the right career choice for them— directly into a legal department—and whether they are somehow cutting off their options.” That’s why he hopes he loses a star: “The day a law firm hires one of our folks and brings them in as an associate or a partner is the day that any concerns that remain will fade away.” It will be “the final feather,” he adds, and it will help his recruiting on campus to be able to use it as proof. Gail Su thinks her boss is missing the point. She gets recruitment letters from law firms already. And she’s not alone. “I take that to mean that we are not undesirable,” she says. She continues to work on deals. As the IP lawyer on HP teams, she’s participated in deals worth millions and into the billions. And she has no intention of going anywhere. “You would have to take me out kicking and screaming,” she vows. Dirty Harry notwithstanding. ■
Go Ahead, Make His Day
Hewlett-Packard’s general counsel says he’s really pleased with his department’s program to hire and train young lawyers. So why is he hoping he loses one? By david Hechler
HP’s general counsel, John Schultz
Nearly five years ago, Hewlett-Packard Co.’s law
department began hiring and training lawyers right out of law school. The tech giant has lured top talent from some of the nation’s best law schools. The new recruits have impressed their colleagues, and they also seem pleased with the match. The lawyer who oversees the program touts an 85 percent retention rate. Not many companies have embraced this model, but HP seems very happy with the results. But the company’s general counsel says he’d like to see that number dip just a bit. His fondest wish for the program, says John Schultz, is that a big law firm hires away one of his budding young stars. “That’s what I wait and hope for,” he says. Say what? It sounds like Schultz is issuing a nice guy’s version of Dirty Harry’s throw-down: “Go ahead, make my day.” But he isn’t kidding, and he’s not saying this to be provocative. His company’s ambition is to create a training program the equal of any law firm’s, and he’ll know they’ve succeeded when a law firm hires away someone who’s been through it. Schultz has a lot riding on the program’s success. He wasn’t the GC when it launched, but he had as much to do with its creation as anybody. The idea was born in 2008, when Schultz, who was a litigation partner at Mor-
Photography By Timothy Archibald
Corporate Counsel ❘ march 2015
45
Cover story
gan, Lewis & Bockius, was offered the job of HP’s litigation chief by Michael Holston, his former partner at the firm who had taken over as the company’s general counsel the previous year. Schultz wasn’t sure he wanted to give up his practice, but he thought the move would be exciting if the department he joined decided to bring some of its litigation in-house. Doing that, he reasoned, would require changing the way HP recruited and trained lawyers. Holston was enthusiastic about the idea, Shultz says, and the economy presented a golden opportunity. When the financial crisis hit, law firms cut back. Some were forced to withdraw offers they’d made to graduating law school students. That got Schultz and company thinking: Rather than bring in associates from firms who had acquired some legal skills but knew nothing about the company, why not hire law students and train them directly? A number of companies have tried this over the years. The one that’s talked it up the most (and is one of the few still doing it) is IBM [“The Art of Hiring,” May 2014]. HP began recruiting 3Ls in 2009, and the following fall brought in its first group of four. One of them was Gail Su, who was recruited from Harvard Law. Su had summered for two law firms, and had learned a lot from each experience. She’d done corporate work for Jones Day in Tokyo her first summer, and IP litigation out of Weil, Gotshal & Manges’ Silicon Valley office the next. She was not interested in IP litigation, which seemed largely “fighting about old patents,” she says. She loved transactions and technology, and she preferred to look forward: She wanted to help companies find new markets. But most of that work is now done in-house. She figured she’d have to endure five to seven years at a firm and then transition into a small company until she could work her way up to a larger one. When she learned of HP’s new program, she jumped at the chance to interview for a job. What she discovered in Palo Alto was a company that was a lot more flexible than what she’d found at big law firms. Even
46
march 2015 ❘ Corporate Counsel
Cover story
though the law department boasts more than 500 attorneys worldwide, they listened to the new lawyers and were responsive. The program was something of a work in progress, and it is still being tweaked. But for her it has more than delivered. After a first year dominated by classes in skills—nego-
tiation, public speaking, contract drafting, patent writing—she found herself working on deals. At first they were small, but from the beginning they were hers. “I’m responsible for my deal,” she says. “My mistakes are my own. No one is monitoring every step.” There was plenty of help, and management was
HP’s program strives to match the lawyers’ interests and its needs. It tells them, “Just raise your hand.” —Bruce ives
“I’m responsible for my deal. My mistakes are my own. No one is monitoring every step.” —Gail Su
there to make sure there were no disasters. But she’s been able to work on deals and learn from experience, and she’s relished that. The program has been up and run-
ning for five years now. This seemed like a good time to see how it’s going. There have been changes during that
time. In 2012, after Schultz was named general counsel, HP fine-tuned the program. The first year still features classroom instruction on skills, along with on-the-job training. But the department initiated three formal tracks for the new hires: litigation, patent prosecution and transactions. And it modified its hiring practices, accord-
ing to Bruce Ives, manager of the new attorney program. Previously it had hired the “best available athletes,” says Ives, analogizing to sports teams that draft players for talent rather than the positions they play. Now the department also gauges candidates’ interests and abilities (as well as the company’s future needs) when they select six lawyers each year. There have been other tweaks. To compete against the big law firms, the department moved up the recruiting cycle and now brings in 2Ls for a summer program. It boosted starting salaries to $150,000 plus bonuses for first-years—competitive with the top firms. The program also invites the young lawyers to spend at last two weeks working in one of the company’s offices abroad, to acquaint them with the global business. The most recent development occurred last September, when Schultz hired another Morgan Lewis litigation partner to help bring more litigation in-house. Part of Kristofor Henning’s job is managing a group of seven young litigators (who represent a third of the 21 young lawyers currently in the program). They are based in Texas, Virginia, California and Pennsylvania (where Henning is also based). Henning has had to create a formal curriculum on the fly, but like the transaction training, it will entail course work (depositions, oral advocacy, legal writing and the like) along with actually litigating cases, he says. Much of the litigating will likely be single-plaintiff employment cases, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission charges and other prelitigation matters. But Henning emphasizes that “it will not be limited by subject matter.” He also expects that his lawyers will avail themselves of moot court opportunities mounted by law firms with which the company has relationships, such as Morgan Lewis and Dechert [“Training by Trial,” January]. One of his young litigators is Angela Briggs, who is also based in the company’s headquarters in Palo Alto. Briggs went to the University of Pennsylvania Law School, John Schultz’s alma mater, and she was one of the last group of students he inter-
Corporate Counsel ❘ march 2015
47
Cover story
viewed in 2011 as HP’s litigation chief (as GC, he no longer has time). She’s two classes behind Gail Su, and on a different track, but Briggs shares the same enthusiasms. Schultz had told Briggs during her interview that HP’s young lawyers control their cases. That’s one of the things that “definitely piqued my interest,” she remembers. And it’s been one of the highlights of her experience at the company, she says: “They really allow you to own the cases you’re assigned.” Briggs has a broad range of responsibilities. She drafts documents, advises internal clients, manages outside counsel—and litigates cases. She and Reuben Rodriguez, a lawyer a year ahead of her, drafted a summary judgment motion in an employment case and then were permitted to argue it themselves last July. The judge granted the motion on the spot. Though it’s now on appeal, Briggs says: “It was definitely a confidence booster for me to work on a case from beginning to end and see it successfully resolved.” What Kris Henning has brought to the program is consistency and a sense of solidarity, Briggs says. Before he arrived, the litigators would often seek feedback from a variety of outside and internal counsel. What was missing was a consistent process. Now most of the feedback comes from Henning, who has helped the litigators feel part of a team despite their geographic discontinuity, Briggs says.
“It was definitely a confidence booster for me to work on a case from beginning to end and see it successfully resolved.” —angela briggs
SPEED AND ACCURACY COME STANDARD. THE BUSINESS LAW AND TRANSACTIONAL SOLUTIONS FROM THOMSON REUTERS CAN HELP YOU WORK SMARTER AND FASTER.
But how does all this training
stack up against the preparation that young lawyers get from law firms? Dan Cooperman is skeptical about the model Schultz has established. Now of counsel at DLA Piper, Cooperman has been in both worlds. After 14 years at McCutchen, Doyle, Brown & Enersen, he was the general counsel at Oracle Corp. for 10 years and then the GC at Apple Inc. for two. “I think it’s a great thing for the legal department,” Cooperman says. But he fears “it’s a bad idea for the lawyer.” The law firm environment offers a rich learning environment, Cooperman argues. Lawyers can learn a great
48
march 2015 ❘ Corporate Counsel
deal from working with different companies in different industries with different cultures and management teams. If you work at a company, on the other hand, you experience only one. Though law firms no longer offer young lawyers rotations to sample different areas of the law, Cooperman continues, “at least you have colleagues giving presentations.” A
general counsel can bring in outside lawyers to try to replicate these offerings, of course, as Cooperman did when he was a GC, “but you’re not living with people who are doing that all the time, which limits your learning.” It’s conceivable, he allows, that a very large legal department may have the breadth of opportunities and resources to train lawyers in a way
For corporate legal departments, there’s a better way to get the job done right while getting it done faster–one that doesn’t sacrifice performance, but rather enhances it. The business law and transactional solutions from Thomson Reuters integrate our unrivaled content, expertise and technologies to enable you to protect documents from errors and speed up the review process; get the most current forms, checklists and clauses; find up-to-the-minute insights and analysis; track companies, news and market trends; and conduct faster, smarter research. And all of it is designed to work together so you can work more productively, confidently and intelligently than ever before. Help your corporate law department put more speed and accuracy into every task at legalsolutions.thomsonreuters.com/CorporateTransactional.
© 2014 Thomson Reuters L-392318/7-14 Thomson Reuters and the Kinesis logo are trademarks of Thomson Reuters.
Cover story
that’s comparable to what they would receive at a large firm. Given its size and global reach, HP may have the tools to do that, but not too many others are likely to, he concludes. Robert Bostrom tends to agree. Bostrom is now general counsel of Abercrombie & Fitch. He was once the managing partner at Winston & Strawn’s New York office, where he recruited and hired lawyers before
available to mentor, and there’s a portfolio of work for junior lawyers to pick up, “I don’t see any theoretical reason why it couldn’t work,” she says. Training lawyers—especially litigators—“is a challenge across the profession,” she says. And that includes law firms. There are fewer and fewer trials, and there’s more and more at stake. She can easily imagine that a skilled litigator with experience in
HP is aiming for a talent process “that combines some of the good elements of what law firms do” with “some of the really good things that companies do.” —john schultz leaving to become general counsel of Freddie Mac. So he, too, has experienced both worlds. If a company has the infrastructure and the time to train its lawyers the right way, HP’s approach “could be valuable,” Bostrom says. But training is hard. If lawyers aren’t specifically assigned the responsibility, it becomes “very ad hoc,” he says. It’s a lot easier when new lawyers arrive with “a core base of knowledge,” like the kind they acquire at a law firm. Elizabeth Sacksteder offers a more positive view. “I’m intrigued,” she says of Schultz’s model—particularly the litigation track. Sacksteder is a litigation partner at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. She’s been a litigation chief at Citigroup Inc. and, before that, The Hartford Financial Services Group Inc., where she sometimes argued motions while managing litigation (which she doesn’t recommend, by the way). Not many companies have the resources to do what HP is doing. But if senior lawyers are
50
march 2015 ❘ Corporate Counsel
repetitive, predictable work would be attractive to a boutique or a regional firm. As for a large firm, it would likely depend on special expertise. A lawyer with deal or patent or litigation skill, who has worked at a high-tech company, where change is rapid, or in a regulated industry, where new regs are constant, could develop the expertise, Sacksteder suggests, that is desirable to a big firm. HP’s legal managers aren’t push-
ing their young lawyers onto a fast track. In fact, what may be the best feature of the department’s program is the patience the managers demonstrate. The lawyers aren’t rushed. The expectation is that most will be ready to “graduate” after four years. No pomp and circumstance is required. Gail Su was told sometime around her four-year anniversary that she’d graduated. “On-the-job training” had dropped the training wheels. Su has continued to do deals—only her role
as well as the deals have grown larger. For others, however, “graduating” also means that they have options. Some will manage outside counsel. Some may continue to try cases, or work for a business unit. Some may ask to do something new, or move to a far-flung location. As Bruce Ives, the program coordinator, tells them, “Just raise your hand.” The department strives to find a match between their interests and the company’s needs, he adds. It seems to be going the way Schultz imagined it. He recognized from the beginning that one of his company’s big advantages was scale. His model wouldn’t work for many other companies, he acknowledges, and it may never be widely adopted. But he thinks it’s working for them. “What we’re trying to do at HP is have a talent process that combines some of the good elements of what law firms do,” he says, “while retaining and augmenting some of the really good things that companies do.” He thinks their training gives lawyers the best of both. But Schultz also knows that it’s not the conventional wisdom, and he’s got some selling to do. “Understandably,” he continues, “there are still folks with doubts about whether it’s the right career choice for them— directly into a legal department—and whether they are somehow cutting off their options.” That’s why he hopes he loses a star: “The day a law firm hires one of our folks and brings them in as an associate or a partner is the day that any concerns that remain will fade away.” It will be “the final feather,” he adds, and it will help his recruiting on campus to be able to use it as proof. Gail Su thinks her boss is missing the point. She gets recruitment letters from law firms already. And she’s not alone. “I take that to mean that we are not undesirable,” she says. She continues to work on deals. As the IP lawyer on HP teams, she’s participated in deals worth millions and into the billions. And she has no intention of going anywhere. “You would have to take me out kicking and screaming,” she vows. Dirty Harry notwithstanding. ■
