General Counsel Interview with Lisa Cooney
L
isa Ann Cooney is Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary for
Day & Zimmermann, a maintenance and construction services and defense sector company. She was appointed General Counsel in 2020, and is the first woman in the company’s history to hold that post. Previously, she was General Counsel for the business unit, focused on staffing for technology. She serves on the Leadership Committee for the Forum for Executive Women and is a member of the National Association of Women Lawyers, the Association of Corporate Counsel and the Philadelphia Council for Business Economics.
How big is your department, and how is it organized? Day & Zimmermann has four business groups, with each having a division general counsel, or DGC, and a team of attorneys and professionals. The DGCs report directly to me, and I report directly to the CEO. I know firsthand about the DGC’s duties. For the first 13 years of my career here, I was DGC for Yoh, the division that specializes in recruiting and staffing for the technology sector. My entire global team comprises 27 attorneys and legal professionals.
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How do your duties as General Counsel of the corporation differ from those you had when you served as DGC? Yoh onboards and offboards thousands of employees and consultants annually, so my day-to-day matters involved employment law, contract negotiation and management. In my current role, I spend time analyzing legal trends and claims, honing strategy in major litigation matters, ensuring that my team has what they need to be successful, and participating in company policy and strategy discussions as a member of the Leadership Council. BACK TO CONTENTS
