Collaboration is key to UF lawyer's success in academia

February 13, 2007

Equipped with the skills of a senior academic, government and private-firm lawyer, Jamie Lewis Keith comes to the University of Florida’s general counsel’s office experienced in leading a major university’s law team.

“Working in government was a great transition to working in a university setting,” Keith said. “You learn to assess the many stakeholders’ different interests and to collaborate with them to bridge differences and solve problems before they arise.”

After graduating magna cum laude from Boston University School of Law in 1984, Keith served as law clerk to a federal judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals in Boston and then as an associate and later as a junior partner in the Boston law firm Hale and Dorr. At the law firm, she honed her legal skills and paid attention to client service. In 1993, she joined Gov. William F. Weld’s administration as general counsel and assistant commissioner for the Massachusetts Division of Capital Asset Management.

During her five years with Weld’s administration, Keith said she learned to recognize that each stakeholder comes to the table with a different perspective, and collaboration is needed to achieve overall objectives. This is an essential skill when working in a university, she said, because a university is a decentralized organization with so many important interests.

In 1999, inspired by the idea of working in a culture of learning and discovery, she left the government to work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. During her seven years at MIT, she created and led the school’s first primary counsel’s office and oversaw enterprise risk assessment.

Today, as vice president and general counsel, Keith oversees the 11 other lawyers in UF’s general counsel’s office. Each of the 12 has particular expertise ranging from research and contracting to student life, athletics, employment and litigation. The goal of the general counsel, however, is not just to resolve legal issues, but to prevent them.

“I view good counsel as enablers,” Keith said. “It is important that we understand the core objectives of the president, trustees and academy, and think strategically to find ways of removing legal barriers to achieving them.”