Legally Bond
Legally Bond
An Interview with Jane Sovern, Higher Education
In this episode of Legally Bond, Kim speaks with Bond higher education attorney Jane Sovern. Jane talks about joining Bond after over 20 years with The City University of New York and the experience she's gained as Interim General Counsel for The Juilliard School and Brooklyn Law School. She also discusses her newest role as President of Legal Services of the Hudson Valley and the importance of pro bono work.
Hello and welcome to Legally Bond, a podcast presented by the law firm Bond, Yannick and King. I'm your host, Kim Woll Price. On today's episode, we'll be talking with Jane Sovereign, a member in Bond's Westchester office who practices in our higher education law practice group. This group is made up of attorneys from a variety of practice areas, including labor, business litigation and real property. Hello, Jane, Welcome to the podcast. Hi, thank you.
Speaker 1:I'm excited to have you on here and grateful for the opportunity to chat with you as a guest. As I mentioned, you practice in the higher education law group and this is your first time on the podcast, so I'd like to talk to you about your work in higher ed, your background, maybe some of your pro bono work, and then how you got to Bond. Does that sound like a plan? Sounds good? All right, great. Well, it's sort of a tradition on the podcast. I like to start our conversation with a bit of background on the guests the first time they join us, so would you mind telling us a little bit about your background? You can choose where you're from, where you went to school, a family, whatever you'd like to talk about.
Speaker 2:Sure, I lived a lot of places as a kid on Northern Virginia and I was born in Washington DC, berlin, germany, the North Shore of Chicago, so moved a lot and I went to Brown University and to Columbia Law School and that's what brought me to New York, was being there and then stayed here, and so I guess after quite a few years I'm actually a New Yorker.
Speaker 1:So that's the thing about New York. You just step to there a few years and you can become a New Yorker. So Bond was. I joined Bond. I think we joined about the same time at the firm. So would you mind telling us a little bit about your path to Bond?
Speaker 2:Sure, when I graduated from law school I went to work for the Paul Weiss firm in New York City and did that for a few years and then moved to a smaller firm where I could get more hands-on, actual lawyering experience. Both were great learning opportunities for me and that was terrific. And I always knew that I wanted to do something in the public sector or something kind of social justice oriented in some way. And so after I had been at my firm Meister, Levendoll and Slade, I was looking for opportunities and saw an ad for an assistant general counsel at the City University of New York and I had no idea what the City University of New York was, because I didn't grow up here and I had no idea there was this huge system. And I got the job and then stayed there for more than 25 years and became deputy general counsel there and for a period of time served as interim general counsel and I think that by the time that I left there the system was 26 campuses, you know $4 billion budget.
Speaker 2:I mean it was like one of my colleagues used to say, it was like the city of Boston, you know sort of the size of the city of Boston, and you had a lot of issues, so, and I left CUNY and wanted to still do something involving higher education and nonprofits, and, as it turned out, there were a number of people at Bond who I had connected with over the years, people like Shelly Kale, who was there then, and Monica Barrett, who's one of the co-chairs of the practice, and sort of one thing led to another and I joined the higher education practice at Bond and started in the very beginning of 2020. And, of course, I was very happy to be in my new office in New York City and then boom, the world changed in the middle of March 2020. And so that's kind of what got me to Bond.
Speaker 1:That's great. Yes, and I also was in January 2020. I think we met at the end of that January thinking I'd be back all the time, and then things were derailed for a few years there. Well, so you're in higher education law. When you were in law school, did you even know that was a possibility of a practice area?
Speaker 2:No, I certainly didn't. Before I went to law school I took a year. After graduating college. I wanted to work for a year at least, and I, when I had done sort of peer career counseling in college and thought that might be a good skill set, and I ended up getting a job as the assistant director of career counseling at Bates College in Maine. So I worked there for a year and was applying to law school while I was advising all the seniors on what they should do, and I was younger than most of them. But anyway, it was a great experience and so I knew a little something about higher education administration. I didn't ever think about being a general counsel or in house or working with higher education, but I was always drawn to higher education as a field, as an industry, you know, found it very interesting, and so the finding CUNY was kind of like a match for me. But no, it's not something that I think most law students think about as an option. You know, it's a little bit sort of hidden?
Speaker 1:I think I think so too, and I hope that throughout our conversation we can sort of shed some light on what the practice covers, because it's a pretty broad series of things that you're involved with when you're doing that work. And you mentioned CUNY and I knew it was big, but I didn't even realize it was that big, having lived in New York City for a while. So it's really a huge university system. So I would guess that experience, having been in-house at a university, is helpful when you're working with Bond's clients in higher ed, because you do understand the financial stresses there under the student service stresses, all of those pieces.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. It is helpful and it's you understand from the point of view of someone in the seat of your client. You know a general counsel, you know a deputy general counsel and assistant general counsel. You really understand what they're looking for from outside counsel and how to be helpful. And also being in-house one of I've realized over the years that being in-house really gave me a kind of holistic big picture understanding and I realized that's what I'd like. One of the things I really like about being in-house because you get into the super nitty gritty but you also see that what you do in a particular area affects other areas and you see how much collaboration there needs to be in an institution.
Speaker 2:And higher education is sort of notorious for being very siloed. You know, with the student affairs people don't talk to the. You know the real estate people or the academic affairs people, but that's something that a lot of places are working to break down. And what I really like about being in higher education as a lawyer is that you touch almost everything, and so to me that first of all, it's incredibly interesting and varied and you learn so much. But also you can be a bridge and you can bring places in the institution and people together and that's kind of what I found myself gravitating to, was really liking that.
Speaker 2:And at Bond, as a law firm lawyer, an outside counsel, it's been interesting seeing what's different and what's the same. Certainly the issues are the same and you can also, I think clients appreciate a holistic look because you can say, hey, have you checked with these departments about what you're thinking about doing? And sometimes they appreciate sort of the heads up and oh yeah, I should have done that kind of thing. But it's interesting because in some ways you each role the inside general counsel and the outside counsel has its pluses and minuses and one of the pluses of being an outside counsel is Kind of a human nature issue, which is that often clients listen to you more because they're paying you, supposed to inside, where it's like all right. I heard from her already, you know.
Speaker 1:It's completely true. I've been nodding so much because I spent 12 years, you know leadership role at a law school, but then I used to joke that the day when I was an alum giving students advice, they listened, and the day I joined the leadership team, they thought I didn't know anything anymore. So it's kind of interesting.
Speaker 2:It is human, so there is sort of you know pluses and minuses of both. But what's so? There's so many Great things about bonds, higher education practice, and one of them is that we do have a number of people who've been in-house in very different institutions and in different roles, but also many people who haven't been in-house but who have been doing contracts for colleges for 30 years or labor negotiations or different kinds of things. So it's really a mix of perspectives.
Speaker 1:So we have such a deep bench at bond and and individuals who practice in such a varied areas. That has to be helpful, because in higher ed practice you might be wanting to purchase the university, or college may want to purchase land Right so, or there may be, you know, a union contract to negotiate. It's just a broad number of things that can happen on the university campus.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and and there is a lot and one thing that you know when you meet people at cocktail parties or weddings or whatever, what do you do? I work with higher education institutions. I'm a lawyer. What do lawyers do at, at colleges like trip and falls? And the answer is yes. That sure you know we. We deal with lawsuits and other things, but there is so much more and, as I was thinking about this, really colleges and universities are their employers, their neighbors, their sometimes landlords, their property owners, and they're definitely, on any given day, I could be working on many different employment issues because that's, you know, lots of different kinds of employees and higher ed has its own Interesting variant, which is tenure, lifetime tenure, so for faculty and some places are unionized, some or not, so that's lots of different issues.
Speaker 2:That one of the most specialized areas of higher education law is student issues, because you don't really have anything like that. You, you have clients for social service and agencies, but students are at their own category, and so there's lots of issues around that financial aids do conduct international study abroad, clinical rotations for students in healthcare law schools where you have clinics, and externships, and different things. So many different issues that are very, very Interesting and kind of their own thing legally, but lots of other absolutely property, real real estate issues, research, certainly at places that do Very high-level federally funded research. There's lots of interesting Issues and there's compliance that runs through almost all of these that over the last 25 years or so, the the compliance requirements for higher education have just increased exponentially. So there's a lot of effort to balance compliance and the ability to be nimble and do what needs to be done. So, just so, it's very Buried and that's one of the things I really enjoy about higher education and you can find the niche in so many different places, which is great.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I mean, as you were talking, I was thinking there's also not only those issues of you know, if it's a healthcare, there's the you know clinical hours and all of that, but the technology transfer, if you're a tier one research institution or other, and you know who owns that and how that all works. So there's just a tremendous amount of different and varied things that can come up. They all have students and faculty and then after that and the compliance issues Title IX and other ways that universities have to comply with federal and state law. But I think that that must make it very interesting, so much so that you've been willing to go back and serve as a general counsel while at bond, to go in as a bond lawyer and serve as a general counsel and I or your second institution doing that. Do you want to talk about that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean it's interesting. Yes, so there it just. It is the. These different issues and the differences between institutions are so interesting.
Speaker 2:So, as it happened last year, one of my clients, the Juilliard School, their general counsel was leaving and the president asked me to be the interim counsel while they were searching for a new general counsel, which they found, and it was fascinating. I had been representing Juilliard in some particular issues, but it was fascinating to get a look at how a world renowned performing arts conservatory operates and how it works and how it's the same as other colleges and how it's entirely different and there were challenges that I could not have possibly thought about. Very, very interesting and a fascinating place and that was terrific. And then, literally right after that, I was asked by Brooklyn Law School to be their general interim general counsel while they're looking. And that's a very, very different place. It's a freestanding law school, so it's not affiliated with a university, and that's a very interesting model.
Speaker 2:It's all law students and just also very interesting to me because, while I went to law school years ago, quite a while ago, law school is different in a lot of ways than it was when I was there and I don't know a lot about things like what role does the ABA play and what kind of reporting do you do and what kind of compliance and how does on-campus interviewing work now and all these things Fascinating, and it's been a really fun and interesting engagement being at a wonderful law school like Brooklyn and so having those very, very different opportunities.
Speaker 2:And CUNY, of course, being a public university that brings in, if you like, constitutional law, go to a public university there, because every day you've got an issue about free speech or search and seizure or all those kind of great, terrific constitutional issues. So a big public system is really really different, even though many of the issues are the same different from a private institution. So it's been great to see that there's no one way to do things and how different institutions are and their cultures are really very different too.
Speaker 1:And you're in a professional school, now, right, with what we call a terminal degree, right, the Juris Doctor, and not only at CUNY. I'm sure you had the middle states accreditation. But now you have middle states and ABA over law schools and those are different, whole different series of things. Those ABA required disclosures for law schools and so you've got to really it must be fun, like a very broad after the CUNY then to go to conservatories so highly regarded as Juilliard, and then to a great law school. It has to be a really fun journey.
Speaker 2:It is, it is and it's. You know, I feel that if I can be helpful, my goal is to be helpful to my clients and to give value and be helpful and help them. At one point when my kids were little, they said to me mommy, what do you do at work? And I said I help people solve their problems. And that's kind of it, just sort of I've learned it out and that's really how I feel is that's what my goal is, that's what I do. I could have said I spend a lot of time talking on the phone and playing on the computer, but I decided not to say that.
Speaker 1:I think that's an excellent answer. Well, besides your your client work, you're also involved with community service and you sell the firms pro bono committee. So can you talk a little bit about why that's important to your practice and career?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I really feel I've been just blessed in so many ways and I have so much to be grateful for, and I see how many people in our own neighborhoods and in many places are struggling to get basic needs that I take for granted, like having a house and knowing that I am not going to be kicked out of my house or if I had some kind of government benefits, you know, not having those ended and not being able to buy groceries. And it's always been important to me to contribute in some way to trying to make things better for and I see folks in a variety of ways, but certainly for folks who are really just my neighbors but who just have had bad luck or a particular something happen. And so I really feel that it's an obligation and to do what I can. And so when I was at CUNY, I had looked to do some kind of service on a nonprofit board and it was really, really hard. I was looking in New York City and almost everything in New York City has some connection to CUNY. So it was very hard to not be running up against sort of conflicts.
Speaker 2:And so one of my friends suggested that I look in Westchester County where I live because CUNY isn't there. And so she recommended the legal services of the Hudson Valley and I went to their website and I'll tell you, I was looking around Westchester for boards and there were a couple of boards where the boards, the people on the boards, were like Mariah Carey or Caroline Kennedy, and I was thinking I don't think like this is, I don't think I'm on their list, shall we say. You know, these were these very wealthy, wonderful, generous foundations and that was I was not going to be part of their plan, so, anyway, so it looked. I liked the way legal services of the Hudson Valley looked. I had done as a law student.
Speaker 2:I spent a summer at a legal services in Brooklyn, as it happened, helping with housing work and helping keep Mrs Callender in her apartment, which we were able to do, and other things, and so they had kind of a waiting period for the board and I joined in 2019 and it's been a terrific organization and the work that they do in multiple counties in the Hudson Valley in many areas, really any kind of civil legal service that really seriously affects the lives of people, everything from veterans benefits and other issue veterans issues, domestic violence, divorce and custody. Housing is the biggest area because there's such an overwhelming need and so many individuals are either unhoused or are at risk of losing their apartment or they're being foreclosed on and many other different areas of civil legal services, and I was just really felt proud of being a part, of doing my bit to help this organization and being on the board.
Speaker 1:I think that's fantastic and there's ways because we sit on the pro bono committee together here at Bond that we're working with legal services of Hudson Valley as a firm, which is, I think, really wonderful, and your role there and the firm engaging with them, I think, exemplifies Bond's commitment to giving back to the areas where we all practice and live.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. And I know when I was a very junior lawyer I did an amnesty case, an immigration case, and couldn't believe that we won. It was super exciting for an individual who had been, you know, had fear of persecution and so forth. I remember it was so great as a very junior lawyer to have something that I was working on, that was really mine, and I of course had help from I can't remember which agency I was working with, but from those lawyers. But it's great as a junior lawyer to have something that you're really handling. And I ended up also doing a case where I had to go to court for a housing organization. But somehow there's this through line of housing for me.
Speaker 2:There is here. Yes, yes so, but it just happened to be a housing agency that had to go to trial and there was a default and I had to do a traverse hearing court on damages. I was sitting there studying the civil practice rules about how to get evidence in, and you know, going in there and you know it was a great experience and it's you get experiences that you wouldn't necessarily get in private practice and that it's not only something that's good to do, it's something that really gives junior lawyers skills and also the feeling that you can go out there and do something and you can just, you can just jump in there and you'll you'll swim, and that's, I think, such a great part of the learning. Experience is challenging yourself, and I think everybody on some level wants to meet a challenge and feel good about themselves, and I think that's a terrific part of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the agencies we work with. I mean, obviously there's members and senior attorneys internally who help, but the organizations we work with, like Legal Services of Hudson Valley or VLP here in Central New York or just cause Rochester they have great lawyers who help along the way. There's a safety net. So jump into the challenge, you will have people to help you when you do it. Exactly.
Speaker 3:Exactly.
Speaker 1:So I'm going to end our conversation, I think, going back to practicing law, where clients are primarily institutions of higher education. Do you have any advice for attorneys who may be interested in getting into this work?
Speaker 2:Yeah, sometimes there are sort of younger attorneys who you know are interested and they asked me and I from time to time I'll meet with somebody who wants to talk about this. The best thing that you can do is to be a really good writer. That's true of so many fields, but there's so much writing in institutions of higher education drafting policies, drafting contracts, letters, so be, and also communicating with your clients that being a good writer and liking to write is very important. Generally, most higher education institutions don't hire attorneys with less than about five years of experience. There are some fellowships that organizations have for either brand new graduates or people who are still in their first part of their career. I know NYU has a wonderful one called the Adam Alloy Fellowship, after someone who many of us in higher education law remember with great fondness. That's a good way to get started. If you want to do that, as a recent graduate I would say a lot.
Speaker 2:There are a lot of different ways into higher education law and certainly having a litigation background is helpful because you know how to do all kinds of contestant proceedings and how to evaluate litigation.
Speaker 2:Being a transactional lawyer is another good way, because there's always a need and everything at higher education is becoming more and more tech oriented. There's so many more educational technology applications and it's very valuable to have experience with tech contracts and contract drafting. But there are lots of other ways too you can, depending on the kind of place you're looking at. A background in construction law could be very helpful, but so there's a lot of different ways, I think, to get skills that would be helpful in terms of making your way into higher, representing a higher ed institution, and, of course, you can work for a firm that has higher education practice, and Bond is a one that is very well known, but there's certainly many others, and there's a lot of overlap. At Bond we have a school law practice and both public school districts and independent schools, charter schools, independent schools, private schools. There are many shared issues and problems and if that between higher education and school law and that's kind of another very related field that could experience in there could be helpful in higher education.
Speaker 1:Thank you, jane, for joining us today. It's always nice to catch up with you. Congratulations on your term as president of the board for legal services of the Hudson Valley and I look forward to having you back on the podcast again soon.
Speaker 2:Great Thanks. It was great to be with you. Thanks for the opportunity.
Speaker 1:Thank you for tuning into this episode of Legally Bond. If you're listening to me and have any, well, I'm going to start that over. That's the first time in a long time. Thank you for tuning into this episode of Legally Bond. If you're listening and have any questions for me, want to hear from someone at the firm or have a suggestion for a future topic, please email us at LegallyBond at bskcom. Also, don't forget to rate, review and subscribe to Legally Bond wherever podcasts are downloaded. Until our next talk, be well.
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