Gina Rubel goes on record with Maria Feeley, the Chief Legal Officer of Washington and Lee University, to discuss the important role of the general counsel in times of crisis and GC’s expectations of outside counsel.
Learn More
Maria Feeley is the Chief Legal Officer of Washington and Lee University, a nationally ranked private liberal arts university established in 1749 with an endowment valued at over $2 billion. She is also Chair of the Board of Trustees of Rosemont College, a private college celebrating its 100th anniversary, ranked #7 as a Top Performer in Social Mobility in this year’s U.S. News & World Report’s Best Colleges Rankings in the Regional Universities North category, up from #15 last year. Rosemont is the only college in the Philadelphia region in the Top 10.
Prior to joining Washington and Lee, Maria served as Vice President, General Counsel, Secretary, and - for two years - as Interim Athletics Director of the University of Hartford, an institution with seven colleges offering over 100-degree programs, students from 48 states, 63 countries, and a robust Division I Athletics program. There she was responsible for oversight of the Office of General Counsel, Office of Equal Opportunity Programs and Title IX Compliance, Athletics Department, Office of the Secretary, Compliance and ERM Programs. As Athletics Director, she oversaw a budget of over $22 million, managed over 75 full time employees and 17 Division I Athletics Programs, launched new Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives and a new Varsity Esports Program, funded and built a new Esports arena, and celebrated the men’s basketball team’s first ever NCAA Tournament appearance and America East Championship win.
Prior to joining Hartford, she served as the Chief Legal Officer of Florida A&M University, one of the largest HBCUs in the country.
From 2007 through 2017, Maria was a partner in the Am Law 100 law firm Pepper Hamilton, where she chaired the Women’s Initiative, was vice chair of the Diversity Committee, and was on the Hiring and Contributions Committees. She was a senior legal consultant for FGIS, a risk management company former FBI Director Louis Freeh founded, and Pepper acquired. With FGIS, she served as a senior consultant for the Deepwater Horizon Economic Claims Center in connection with the largest court-supervised settlement program in U.S. history following the BP oil spill.
In 2014, the Pennsylvania Governor appointed her to the State Ethics Commission, an independent agency which enforces the Ethics Act, and certain provisions of the Lobbying Disclosure Law, Gaming Act, and Medical Marijuana Act.
Philly Biz named her a “Top Business Attorney;” Profiles in Diversity Journal honored her in its 10th Annual WomenWorthWatching® issue; The Legal Intelligencer and Pennsylvania Law Weekly named her one of Pennsylvania’s 25 Women of the Year in 2008; she received the Philadelphia Bar Association’s Peretta Award, was appointed Philadelphia liaison to the ABA’s Commission on Women, co-chair of the 2010 ABA Women in Law Leadership Academy Programming Committee, Zone 1 Delegate to the Pennsylvania Bar Association House of Delegates; she was elected to the Board of Governors of the 13,000 member Philadelphia Bar Association, appointed to the Committee on Judicial Selection and Retention, and chaired the Association’s Women in the Profession Committee, Annual Bench Bar Conference, Women’s Rights Committee, Sandra Day O’Connor Award Committee, and Drafting Committee for the Development of a Call to Action and Best Practices for the Retention and Promotion of Women Lawyers.
Maria obtained her JD from Washington and Lee University where she served as senior articles editor for the Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice f/k/a Race and Ethnic Ancestry Law Digest. She obtained her BA, cum laude, in Mathematics and History from Rosemont College, where she received a full-tuition academic scholarship, was inducted into the Delta Epsilon Sigma national honor society and was an adjunct business law professor from 2006 through 2015.
It is axiomatic that if you want to have a successful legal career, you need to learn your craft. Most areas of legal practice require highly refined analytical abilities coupled with good judgment. For the most part, the first developmental task of any new lawyer is to learn how to practice law.
