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PSU Creates General Counsel Office, Hires Ex-Justice to Run It
By Gina Passarella
January 27, 2010
The Legal Intelligencer
Law departments at even the largest of institutions are no strangers to running lean. But for Penn State, with a $3.8 billion operating budget, the legal team was non-existent — until now.
The university's board of trustees approved last week the hire of Duane Morris partner Cynthia Baldwin, a former state Supreme Court justice, as the school's first full-time general counsel and chief legal officer.
Baldwin, who is based in the Pittsburgh office of Duane Morris, will serve in a transitional role for Penn State, whose main campus is in University Park, to help it establish and organize the new legal office and assist in the search for a permanent general counsel. That permanent position will be filled following a national search, the university said.
The decision to create an in-house legal function at the university was based on a recommendation by an external peer review conducted last year. The review found the conventional model at other universities is to have in-house counsel oversee legal work and perform core activities like reviewing contracts and policies, establishing procedures and advising the Board of Trustees and senior management.
A Penn State spokeswoman said the in-house legal function was created to keep up with current trends in higher education as well as to better match the needs of the institution as it has grown in size and complexity. There are now more than 90,000 students, 39,000 employees, a law school, a medical college and 24 campuses under Penn State's umbrella. The university also oversees more than $765 million in research funding annually.
Baldwin, a member of the Board of Trustees, was privy to the report suggesting an in-house counsel function be created. She said the administration came to her about an interim position after it realized the learning curve a general counsel would face in understanding the complexities of the institution along with creating the office. Baldwin, a Penn State alumna and veteran board member, knows the school inside and out.
She accepted the position and is relocating to State College to take on what she called an "exciting and challenging" role. She will maintain her house — and her husband — in Pittsburgh. Baldwin's position as immediate past-chairwoman of the board ended as of this month, so she then resigned from the board altogether, effective Jan. 29. Her last day at Duane Morris is Monday.
She wouldn't put a time limit on her new position, but said she could be there at least a year-and-a-half to two years building the office, figuring out how to track matters and finding other outside law firms to use. Baldwin said the office would probably look to hire a paralegal and a staff attorney while the search for a full-time general counsel is under way. She said she would be handling legal matters as well as the administrative aspects of creating a general counsel's office.
"I envision my role as being general counsel and setting up the general counsel office," she said.
For more than 50 years, State College-based law firm McQuaide Blasko has served as the university's outside general counsel. Penn State said the firm would continue to handle much of the school's legal work.
"We have been served extraordinarily well by McQuaide Blasko and we will maintain a significant relationship with them well into the future," Penn State President Graham Spanier said in a statement. "We are fortunate to have in Cynthia Baldwin someone with such vast legal expertise at the highest level and also a thorough understanding of the University and its needs. Her oversight during this transition will allow us to implement a model for legal services that addresses our anticipated future needs."
The new office could potentially create an expanded role for Duane Morris as well. The firm is already doing some work for the university and having a former partner working for a client is rarely seen by firms as a negative.
Baldwin said McQuaide Blasko would continue to do much of the work, but said she will also be looking for other law firms that can provide the needed expertise at the most affordable price. She said firms are getting particularly creative with fee arrangements in this economy and it is the university's "mission to be cost-efficient."
Baldwin is a gubernatorial appointee to the Board of Trustees and served as its vice chairwoman from 2001 to 2003 and as its chairwoman from 2004 to 2006. She received both her undergraduate and master's degrees from the university. She graduated from Duquesne University School of Law and was the first black woman elected as a Common Pleas Court judge in Allegheny County. She served on the state Supreme Court from 2006 until her interim term concluded at the end of 2007.
This article originally appeared in The Legal Intelligencer and is republished here with permission from law.com.
