November 20, 2008
On Thursday, October 16th, Vice Dean Andrew J. Simons ’65
presented Donald Rosenberg `75 with the St. John’s School of Law
Dean’s Award at the St. Regis Hotel. Mr. Rosenberg presently
serves as the Executive Vice President, General Counsel, and
Corporate Secretary for Qualcomm Incorporated. Qualcomm
Incorporated is a Fortune 500 company with close to 13,000
employees operating in countries around the world and is one of the
telecommunications industry’s greatest start-up success
stories. Qualcomm has been in the Fortune 500 since 1999 and
has been one of Fortune’s “Most Admired Companies” each year since
2000.
The event was attended by students, faculty, and over one
hundred alumni who either serve as general counsel or executives at
corporations, or whose practices focus on the legal needs of
corporations. Professor Michael Perino, serving as moderator
for the presentation, noted during his introduction, “We live in
the age of the legal specialist. Forget about law
generally. Even in the narrower realm of business law the
lawyer of today is almost invariably a specialist. We have
M&A lawyers, securities lawyers, antitrust lawyers,
intellectual property lawyers, and litigators. Lawyers now
carve out even narrower sub-specialties. … But I think there is one
principal exception to the specialist lawyer, and that is the
Corporate General Counsel.”
After touching on Mr. Rosenberg’s accomplishments he shared this
final thought, “Don has truly had and continues to have a
fascinating and intellectually challenging career – the kind of
career that I dare say most law students only hope they will
have. I can’t think of a better exemplar of the corporate
counsel as Renaissance lawyer, a better model for our students to
emulate, or a better example of the kind of great lawyers that St.
John’s produces.”
During his remarks Mr. Rosenberg reflected upon his time at St.
John’s Law, his career working at IBM, and how the challenges he
encountered at IBM in the 70’s and 80’s are still relevant
today. These obstacles parallel those encountered by counsel
today practicing in the intellectual property arena seeking to
maintain competitive advantage on behalf of their clients or
companies. In particular, Mr. Rosenberg focused on the
problems that a multi-national technology company faces when trying
to comply with antitrust and competition policies that vary from
country to country. In such a situation, he noted, the
country with the strictest standard may effectively set the
standard for the remainder of the world, thereby creating a
potential race to the bottom. Mr. Rosenberg identified this
problem as perhaps the key legal issue that antitrust enforcement
authorities must solve in the coming years.
During the reception, Mr. Rosenberg mingled with attendees and
addressed specific questions pertaining to a myriad of industries
such as telecommunications, whole-sale energy trading and the
financial services marketplace.
If you would like to learn more about the Law School’s Corporate
Alumni initiative, contact George Richardson, Executive Director of
Development and Alumni Relations at 718-990-5792 or richardg@stjohns.edu.