ALUMNI PROFILE
CLASS NOTES Caesar Lopez ’12 Caesar Lopez, associate general counsel for Major League Soccer, took some time out to talk with current Pace Law student Brieanne Scully, who hopes to follow a similar career path as Lopez: BS: You were part of the group that created PIPSELF (Pace Intellectual Property, Sports & Entertainment Law Forum). How did that come about? CL: I began law school determined to pursue corporate law. During orientation, though, I remember walking by the table for SEALS (Sport & Entertainment Arts Law Society) and thought, “I didn’t even think about going to law school to work in sports.” I found that I could blend the law with my love for sports. I then found that some law schools had sport and entertainment journals and it seemed our students should be able to participate in the scholarly discussion of these current topics. I started talking to Chris Psihoules, a classmate of mine, and we created a plan—it’s going to be sports, it’s going to be entertainment, it’s going to be intellectual property. Jenni Wiser and Kristin Luciano were also interested in this area of law. Among the four of us, we put together the first issue and took it to the Law School administration. The following year, we were able to get more people to join us. I think I was lucky to have classmates who were not only supportive, but who also wanted to be part of a team. Chris and I still serve as advisors to PIPSELF. BS: How did you make the transition from a law student to your first job as in-house counsel with Beiersdorf, an international consumer products company? CL: That was a transition that was a long time in the making. From my first semester, I was focused on obtaining an in-house position. I made every attempt to get the practical experience necessary and really focused on how I was going to
make myself valuable to an organization. During my last semester, I wanted to do a corporate externship. I looked at Beiersdorf and realized it had a fairly new legal department with only one attorney who was responsible for the U.S. division of the company. It offered a unique opportunity to forge my own path and add value to the company. As an intern, I took on responsibilities that were beyond the original scope of the work. Toward the end of my term, I decided to be bold and went to the general counsel and proposed why it would be important to hire me. Fortunately, she agreed. BS: How has Pace impacted your career? CL: Pace Law School allowed me the freedom to carve out my niche. It allowed me the flexibility to build a transactional law focus combined with classes that suited my interests. With varied course content and the experiential learning, I figured out what I really wanted to do.
“Pace Law School allowed me the freedom to carve out my niche. It allowed me the flexibility to build a transactional law focus combined with classes that suited my interests.”
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