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CAREER PATHS
Inside view
Loyola alumni who work as in-house counsel wear
lots of hats. For many, that’s the best part.
W
orking as an in-house
counsel wasn’t the
plan for Suzanne
Catanzaro (JD ’95)
after she graduated
from the School of
Law. Frankly, the idea had never crossed her mind.
Instead, Catanzaro spent the first 10 years of
her career working as a litigator, just like a number
of her classmates. But for Catanzaro the role wasn’t
a good fit.
“I was miserable,” she says. “Litigation and
my personality were at complete odds with each
other. I think I’m very good with the thinking and
strategizing behind the scenes. But the actual
litigation wasn’t my forte.”
A decade into her career, Catanzaro needed a
change. Several months into what she anticipated
being a yearlong sabbatical, she found an in-house
job at the Tribune Co. There, she leveraged the
wide-ranging legal background she received at
Loyola to represent the media conglomerate in
commercial and TV program contract negotiations,
advised the company’s various promotions
departments, and held a host of other roles.
The job’s focus—helping the company drive its
business—was a welcome change.
Working as an in-house counsel requires an
attorney to wear many hats. And that’s a role that
Catanzaro, who has worked as senior counsel at
ConAgra Foods Inc. since 2008, embraces. In her
previous jobs as outside counsel, “I wasn’t privy
to how a piece of litigation might figure into their
business priorities, in their bottom lines, or whether
it actually affected them,” she says. “But as in-house
counsel I’m involved in business decisions. And
that makes me very invested in the company—I
have relationships with the people in the company;
they’re my coworkers and my friends.”
Catanzaro is hardly alone in finding that in-
house counsel offers a rewarding career path, albeit
one that many fail to consider when graduating
from law school. That’s despite the fact that the
starting salaries for in-house counsel jobs outpace
many other areas of the law, according to the
National Association of Law Placement Inc. For
instance, the average starting salary for a business
job for which a JD is required—a category that
encompasses in-house counsel—was $72,824 for
those who graduated from law school in 2011,
more than positions in law firms with 11 to 25
attorneys ($67,712), firms with two to 10 attorneys
($53,525), government ($54,742), academia
($52,704), judicial clerkships ($51,761), and public
interest ($45,573).
“Whether as part of a plan or through fortuity,
many lawyers find incredible satisfaction working
in house,” says Dean David Yellen. “This career
choice lets them use their skills as a lawyer while
being an important part of an enterprise in a
different way than they would at a law firm. We
try to expose our students to in-house counsel as
a possible career path, even though most people
who wind up in house don’t necessarily start out
that way.”
Broad portfolio
To Catanzaro, one of the most appealing
aspects of working as an in-house counsel is
that her portfolio is wide-ranging. Working in
ConAgra’s Naperville, Illinois, office, she serves as
lead counsel for the company’s global marketing
division, as well as the grocery and snacks units
within the company’s consumer foods business
(the company’s 18 other in-house attorneys work
out of its Omaha headquarters). In that role, she
reviews advertising and marketing materials for
the company’s brands—including Reddi-wip,
Orville Redenbacher, and Pam—which means
looking at everything from the copy for TV
commercials to reviewing community managers’
replies to customers’ social media posts. She also
works to ensure the brands are in compliance with
the state and federal regulatory requirements and
negotiates commercial contracts like advertising
and licensing agreements, while also seeking to
resolve advertising and contract disputes prior to
litigation—and, if litigation can’t be avoided, assists
litigation counsel with fact discovery and trial
preparations. The job isn’t easy. In fact, Catanzaro
says it is “the most challenging and the most
satisfying job I’ve ever had.”
Wide-ranging expertise
Part of the challenge of being an in-house
counsel is that it requires a wide-ranging
knowledge of topics, as well as a solid grounding in
ethics and compliance, says Deb Golden (MBA ’81,
JD ’84), who is executive vice president, general
counsel, and secretary at railcar leasing company
GATX Corp. “You must have a deep enough
understanding of various areas of the law to spot
potential problems so that you can say, ‘This could
be an issue’ or ‘We should retain outside expertise
for this.’” While she has a number of specific
responsibilities, ultimately Golden sees her job
as strategic advisor and problem solver. “You
have to bring good judgment to the job because
a million issues come up and you have to react
quickly,” she says.
Like Catanzaro, Golden didn’t set out to
become an in-house counsel. After graduation,
she worked at Schiff, Hardin &Waite, where she
handled corporate law and commercial litigation.
But after having her second child, the weight of
her job’s near-constant travel began to get to her.
When a former colleague who left the firm to work
as in-house counsel for telecommunications giant
Ameritech Corp. (now AT&T) told her the company
was looking for a commercial litigator to handle
class-action suits, she took the plunge and left the
firm. “Frankly, I’ve never looked back,” she says.
After leaving Ameritech, Golden worked as
in-house counsel for a short time in the Illinois
governor’s office, then for energy company
Midwest Generation, before she began working
Suzanne Catanzaro traded litigation for in-house
counsel work. At ConAgra Foods Inc., she’s deeply
involved in business decisions—"and that makes
me very invested in the company," she says.
SPRING 2013
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LOYOLA LAW
