NJL supports educational institutions with a multi-disciplinary practice and a team of attorneys who bring decades of experience, including serving as in-house general counsel and human resources professionals. Our deep expertise and practical advice position us as trusted advisors to institutional leaders and stakeholders on transactional and defense matters of varied scale and complexity.
We’ve worked with:
- Public and private colleges and universities
- Professional schools
- Private and charter primary and secondary schools
- Public primary and secondary schools in complex matters
- Foundations, athletic conferences, alumni associations, and other organizations that support educational institutions
We are comfortable with complicated, multidisciplinary, high stakes, and sensitive matters. We conduct investigations, help resolve disputes, and provide strategic counsel across a broad range of issues. Our firm is known for its experience with senior leadership transitions; internal investigations; highly sensitive discrimination claims and complex class actions, and projects and initiatives requiring deep subject matter expertise, practical understanding of the educational environment and operations, and a strategic, value-oriented approach.
As a certified women-owned law firm, we offer diverse client teams who satisfy the unique needs, goals, and organizational values of educational institutions including demographic relatability, and the ability to deftly navigate employment, governance, academic, student, advancement, and other institutional systems and structures. We are committed to understanding and aligning our strategic counsel in ways that help our clients uphold their own values, fostering high confidence and outcomes rooted in integrity.
We approach every matter with discretion and the goal of advancing mission while efficiently mitigating risk exposure and preserving public reputation. We draw on our decades of experience advising all sizes of nonprofit and for-profit clients, from Fortune 50 companies and large university systems to small schools and start-up ventures, in matters that can have significant, long-term implications for the organization. We scale our involvement and effort to match clients’ priorities and objectives, while also delivering quality service, practical solutions, and value.
Our service offerings take advantage of the firm’s core areas of specialization—labor and employment, corporate and transactional services, business litigation, and product liability/tort litigation—and include:
- Academic affairs
- Academic freedom
- Affiliations and collaborations
- Affirmative action plans
- Artificial intelligence
- Business and general litigation
- Charitable foundation support
- Contracts and transactional matters
- Copyright and trademark
- Crisis management
- Data privacy and security
- Diversity, equity, and inclusion
- Faculty governance, including faculty handbooks, grievances, and terminations
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- FERPA compliance
- Financial aid
- General counsel services, including outside, fractional, and interim general counsel
- Gifts and grants including Cy Pres matters
- Governance
- Immigration
- Internal investigations
- Labor and employment
- Liability waivers and personal injury
- Pay equity and transparency
- Policymaking
- Political advising
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