Training future corporate lawyers

Corporate law is more than mergers and acquisitions, says Taylor. It includes lawyers who specialize in areas such as labor and employment, real estate, and compliance or are generalists covering many topics for a corporate client.

“When I started law school, I thought I wanted to be an environmental lawyer,” explains Taylor, who graduated from UC College of Law in 1991. “I didn’t have lawyers in my family so I had no idea that an environmental lawyer practices administrative and regulatory law.”

“That might seem obvious to some people, but it certainly wasn’t to me,” says Taylor. “But when I started law school I learned pretty quickly that there were a lot of different areas that interested me more, including appellate practice and corporate law.”  

There was no Corporate Law Center at UC Law when Taylor was a student so he chartered his own career path. That journey spanned more than three decades of legal and business experience. He spent a decade as a litigator, nearly 20 years as a corporate lawyer and five years running a startup corporation.

Taylor wore many hats including roles as general counsel of a Luxembourg-based emerging markets mobile network provider, but also served as a chief operating officer, chief commercial and legal officer, deputy general counsel,  and chief ethics and compliance officer. These experiences allowed him to build the connections and expertise that serve him well at the Corporate Law Center at UC Law. Learn more about the center on the UC Law webpage.

“As people discover in law school what they’re interested in, I want to help them see a real road map into a career,” explains Taylor. 

Taylor’s vision for the Corporate Law Center is to find the intersections between academia, providing opportunities to students and finding connections with the legal community. Through its annual symposium Taylor is raising the center’s profile. Now in its 35th year, the symposium has become a signature gathering for thoughtful debate and cutting-edge scholarship. It provides scholars, senior in-house counsel, practitioners, alumni and law students a forum for robust exchange of ideas on emerging challenges and best practices in corporate governance.

This year’s annual Corporate Law Center symposium is set for Friday, March 6, in Room 160 of the College of Law. The all-day event will bring together prominent voices in corporate law to examine one of the field’s most consequential and evolving areas: corporate ethics and compliance. More details on the symposium are available on the UC Law website.

“Ethics is important to the legal profession,” says Taylor. “Lawyers can sometimes reduce ethics questions to a set of rules. But if I take off my lawyer hat, ethics is about right and wrong and acting in accordance with a moral code and a set of values. The best way to allow that to happen is to promote candid conversation and even dissent within your organization.”

Taylor’s looking forward to the upcoming symposium’s discussions on whistleblowing, zero tolerance policies, and creating and maintaining effective compliance and ethics programs. He wants to see corporations create cultures that value and even promote dissent within a company and hopefully lessen the need for whistleblowing.

“I’m putting a premium on the experiential side, the bridge building to the bar and contributing to academic research and coming up with new ideas and new ways of looking at things,” he adds. “We are relooking at old ideas and seeing if they still work.”

Additionally, Taylor is developing strategies to enhance exposure to the corporate law experience for UC Law students. He oversees 10 to 15 fellows at the Corporate Law Center and has created the Corporate Law Lab podcast which airs bimonthly and tackles emerging topics in law, spotlights movers and shakers in the legal field and acts as a forum for discussing new practices in the legal community.

 “We are fostering connections between UC Law and the practicing legal community, not just in Cincinnati, but nationally,” explains Taylor.

About a year after Taylor was named Corporate Law Center director he got another title — interim director of externships at UC Law. 

He focuses on expanding experiential learning opportunities that enable students to benefit from the integration of classroom instruction with real-world legal experiences in law firms, businesses, governmental and public interest organizations and judicial chambers. 

Externships follow the university’s long tradition of cooperative education, which had its beginnings at UC in 1904. Since then, UC has incorporated experience-based learning in nearly all its colleges, and the program is consistently ranked in the Top 5 of co-op programs in the U.S.

Growing the College of Law network of legal professionals interested in providing these experiences for law students has also become one of Taylor’s priorities.

Externships last a whole semester and students put in from 100 to 150 hours at their worksite depending on how much academic credit they seek. Externships also require independently taking an online course, where Taylor and his colleagues help students with setting goals, developing professionalism and navigating a good work-life balance.

“They are getting work experience, and we give them lectures and other materials that are complementary to that experience,” Taylor adds.

This semester there are nearly 100 students in UC Law’s externship program, taught by Taylor, Nora Wagner, assistant dean for international and graduate programs, and Tracey Johnson, director of law professional development and placement.

“We are trying to make it so that every student that wants an externship can have one,” says Taylor. “Everyone can come out of law school having some real practical experience under their belt.”

“For many of our students, an externship is their first experience in a professional environment.  Getting to see what lawyers do on a daily basis helps connect what they are learning in their other classes to the real world.  It also gives them a chance to sharpen their skills and understand what future employers expect.”

The Corporate Law Lab podcast is an important forum but is also a repository for interviews with corporate attorneys, who share their experiences and offer advice to new lawyers needing direction in future careers and in obtaining externships. Learn more about the podcast on the Cincinnati Law's YouTube.

Kris Caudell, a second-year law student and corporate law fellow, credits Neil with fostering mentorship for and among law students. Caudell says he taps fellows to co-host his podcast and grants them access to professionals in the legal community.  It’s a chance to ask questions, make connections and gain mentors.

Caudell says Taylor also asks older law students in his fellows program to serve as mentors to first-year law students who may still be deciding what area of law they hope to practice. 

“I always knew I wanted to be a labor and employment attorney and what Neil has done is integrate those practice areas that are deeply involved with corporate law, but not exactly corporate law,” explains Caudell. “That’s been helpful. Even if you don’t want to do corporate law you have a role in a corporate practice area.”

For example, corporate lawyers handle mergers and acquisitions involving companies, but they may turn to someone who specializes in labor and employment law to handle due diligence — check for hidden liabilities before closing a deal, explains Caudell.

“Neil helps us make those connections where they aren’t intuitive unless you have done the work in that area,” says Caudell.

Featured top image of Neil Taylor shown in the atrium of the University of Cincinnati College of Law. Photo/Joey Yerace/University of Cincinnati.