It is a warm spring afternoon in
They talk about their peers in other European countries, their business trips to remote former Soviet republics, and their difficulties with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in the
They share several characteristics. Many spent at least part of their university years in the Erasmus Programme, a student exchange program that allows young Europeans to study in other countries. They might acquire advanced degrees in the
All of the Roman lunch attendees gave two big reasons for why they are currently working in-house. Companies are expanding their law departments because they have a larger, better-qualified pool of Italian lawyers to choose from. And the ubiquity of cross-border deals and joint ventures, plus an exponential leap in EU regulation, have made Italian businesses aware of the need for in-house legal help just down the hall.
One of those attendees, Bruno Cova, is a perfect example of the new breed. Although Cova, 48, now runs the
Cova returned to
Of his cohort, Cova says: “With their international experience, openness to change, and ability to work in a multicultural environment and across languages, they have become trusted advisers to, and an integral part of, senior management. What used to be the exception is now increasingly the norm.”
The notion of an in-house legal department with clout is fairly new to Italians. Until as recently as a decade ago, the goal for most law graduates was to go into family firms or open their own practices, with the lucky few finding jobs in a handful of large firms. Companies may have had a couple of lawyers on staff but there was no legal department as such. Many staff lawyers, in fact, reported to the chief financial officer or an administrator.
“Whenever an acquisition or an important transaction beyond the scope of paper-pushing came up, [companies] sought outside counsel,” says Elena Berlucchi, senior counsel of GE Oil & Gas in
Working in-house carried a stigma, too. If a company did have an in-house lawyer, says Marco Bollini, GC of Eni’s gas and power division for the past two years, “it was someone who may have failed the Bar or didn’t want to work in private practice”. Even now, Berlucchi says: “When I told my father I had accepted an offer from GE, he was horrified. His generation was convinced that private practice was the only way to be a lawyer.”
But that stigma is not warranted any longer. Bollini says his department has become more discerning in how it chooses its talent. “We used to hire people right out of university,” he says. “Now we look for lawyers with at least a couple of years of outside international experience — and they have to be fluent in English at least. Other languages are a bonus.”
Berlucchi, 42, is one of the new breed. She studied French in school and learned English on the job. Her fluency in English is largely the result of a stint in the early 1990s with the Italian law firm Pavia & Ansaldo, which sent her to
With such a successful law firm career, why did she go in-house in 2007 at GE? “I began to think of the benefits,” she says. “There were so many connections with my practice in oil and gas and I decided that I was attracted to the size of the company and the kind of work they offered.”
Francesca Chevallard, 35, is also part of the new generation. And, despite her age, she is one of the pioneers — she started in-house at Fiat more than a decade ago (she is now senior legal expert at Unicredit in
Chevallard was hired by Fiat right out of university and was not exactly given a long apprenticeship. “I was only 23,” says Chevallard, who spent a year in
The change in corporate counsel, Italian-style, has not gone unnoticed by outside observers. “I have noticed a huge shift in the quality of the in-house Bar,” says Rome-based legal consultant Leigh Dance, who advises multinational law firms and legal departments. “A decade ago,” Dance continues, “corporate counsel were much more domestically focused. But
Instrumental in the cultural shift was Eni —
It is almost inevitable that Eni would serve such a role. The energy business is, by its nature, global. And, notes Eni director of legal affairs Massimo Mantovani (pictured above right), English is the lingua franca of the industry, so Eni always hired bilingual lawyers.
Mantovani, besides heading Eni’s legal department, is the first Italian general counsel to sit on a large corporation’s executive committee; he was named to that post in 2005. Eni management, he says, is a pioneer in raising the status of the chief legal officer: “Our company sees the added value. Lawyers are not here only to treat problems.”
The 44-year-old Mantovani is typical of his generation. Fluent in English, he graduated first from the Universita Statale di Milano, then went on to earn an LLM at King’s College London. He is licensed to practise law both in
His former colleague Cova calls Mantovani a “transformational agent” in Italian legal culture. Since becoming Eni’s top lawyer in 2005, Mantovani has reorganised the legal department into four main areas and energised the lawyers there. He boasts that the average age of ‘first-line’ lawyers who answer to the GC used to be 57; it is now 43.
And, like GE, Eni’s law department has a global reach. The legal group boasts 225 lawyers, with an additional 70 support staff. About a third of Eni’s lawyers are licensed to practise in other countries and those lawyers work in 15 countries around the globe — even in hot spots like Iran and Angola.
If the corporate counsel job itself sounds more and more like the
Five years ago, Italians were riveted by a TV miniseries called Best of Youth. It told the story, through the eyes of two Roman brothers, of the country’s political and social upheavals of the past few decades. There is an early scene in which a professor says to one of the brothers: “Do you have any ambition? Then leave
The new breed takes the professor’s advice to heart but, unlike most Italians of a century ago, these new travellers usually return. Why? “I wanted to rejoin my family and contribute to the growth of my country,” says Marco Pierettori, 35, head of legal, compliance and audit division of Milan-based Lehman Brothers International (Europe) — Italian Branch. Courtesy of a Fulbright scholarship, Pierettori worked on an LLM at the
They may return, but they are not quite the same. These lawyers bring lessons they learned abroad to their new jobs in
Massimiliano ‘Max’ Maestretti also learned skills abroad that he brought back to
Still, Maestretti fits right in with his counterparts at other Italian companies. With a dual degree in business administration and law, he worked in
Maestretti made headlines last year by leading a battle against the McLaren F1 team on behalf of Ferrari. Designs for Ferrari’s latest race cars showed up on McLaren computers and Ferrari went before the International Automobile Federation, the governing body of F1 racing, with a complaint. Eventually, Maestretti led a team of seven outside counsel, from
Maestretti’s feat is quite an accomplishment for a small team — but perhaps not surprising. GE’s Resnick says that when he brings his Italian colleagues together with other Europeans, the Italians, perhaps because they have dealt with obstinate bureaucracies and red tape for most of their lives, usually come up with the most creative solutions.
Another difference? “They aren’t wait--ing for the phone to ring any more,” Resnick says. “They are making the calls.”
A version of this article also appeared in the July edition of Corporate Counsel, Legal Week’s sister title.