Berkeley Law Presents: The GC as the Good Guy

UC Berkeley School of Law campus.



Today’s general counsel aren’t just technical advisers on the law. Top corporate lawyers are also strategic advisers in their companies’ efforts to be good citizens, be it through environmental, social or governance initiatives.

That’s according to Amelia Miazad at University of California, Berkeley School Law, who has created an entire course around this relatively new aspect of the general counsel role. Miazad is founding director and senior research fellow of the Business in Society Institute at Berkeley Law.

Her class, called Business in Society, uses weekly case studies to examine how general counsel are shaping corporate sustainability—or what used to be called corporate social responsibility. Each week the inside counsel involved in those case studies come to her class for a facilitated discussion with students. She said is the first of its kind. (Other law school classes focus on the GC role but none center on the sustainability aspect of the job, she said.)

Miazad and some law school colleagues devised the class after hearing from alumni general counsel and other GCs who had spoken at the law school about how legal and compliance departments are increasingly involved in corporate sustainability.

Here are some example of the inside counsel who have visited or will soon come to her class:

• Seth Jaffe, General Counsel of Levi Strauss & Co. discussed his role in the company’s post Parkland gun safety advocacy.

• Amy Weaver, General Counsel of Salesforce, talked with students about helping steer the companies LGBTQ advocacy efforts in North Carolina, Georgia, and Indiana.

• Inside counsel from outdoor apparel maker Patagonia are scheduled to discuss their work on the company’s litigation to stop the Trump Administration’s reduction of the Bears Ears National Monument in Utah.

Miazad noted that these are very high-profile matters in a politically charged environment that general counsel must navigate their companies through.

General counsel are a pretty busy lot, but Miazad said she hasn't encountered any trouble lining up the 15 lawyers necessary for her semester-long class. She said general counsel are eager to share this aspect of their work.

Miazad said she's had to turn away students who wanted to take the class because enrollment was capped at 30.