Education
Industries
Educational institutions and education-related companies encounter complex and specialized legal issues. Litigation and investigations of education entities and major transactions in which they engage require the sixth sense of those seasoned in the crucible of legal matters with a huge reputational dimension. Educational institutions also have unique practices, procedures, and cultures that influence their responses to all of their challenges.
For-profit educational businesses face their own unique challenges: they encounter all the issues that any for-profit business faces when contemplating a transaction or litigation, while also being subject to the specialized regulations that affect other educational institutions as well as additional regulations or public scrutiny.
WilmerHale’s premier litigation, regulatory, transactional and tax practices not only have the great breadth and depth that educational clients need, but our repeated experience with the highest profile and important matters, in the complex culture of educational institutions and businesses, allows us to see the multiple concerns in every legal issue that we face with them.
When matters are enormously sensitive, and involve legal, political, and reputational dimensions, WilmerHale is most often called upon. A great number of our partners have been minute-to-minute advisors on bet-the-school transactions, litigation and regulatory negotiations. We understand the constituencies that a university has bearing down, the broad consultation that necessitates, and how the public face of the resolution has to be crafted. Our advice in this area is also seasoned by the major non-educational transactions and litigation in which we are involved. Many of these matters have a public dimension that we understand, as well as requiring the highest level of legal finesse.
Our lawyers have served in education-related positions on Capitol Hill and at senior levels within the Executive Branch. In addition, our lawyers know educational issues from the inside. Many have been counsel to major educational companies and major universities for decades. A large number are, or have been, trustees of large and small institutions, and have chaired the most prominent colleges and universities.
Because of our inside knowledge, WilmerHale understands the concerns our non-profit education clients face when choosing outside counsel. In an environment where legal fees are rarely the most popular expenditure a university can make, schools want assurance that they are getting the maximum return from their regular legal work. University officials need to be fully aware of all available competing options, so they themselves can make the judgment about how to proceed, because "maximizing the return" is a more complex calculation than it is for many for-profit organizations. Simultaneously, they want the work done as efficiently as possible. And, finally, they want it done right, because being right has its own special ethos in academia, where "good enough" rarely is. WilmerHale takes these three dimensions into account: full disclosure of the options, cost effectiveness and meticulous work.
In addition to the details of our practice found at right, examples of our recent engagements include:
- We represented the University of Michigan in Gratz v. Bollinger in the Supreme Court.
- We represented Columbia University in its critical eminent domain case in the New York Court of Appeals.
- We represented Duke University in actions brought by former college athletes.
- We handled the largest university merger in decades. We provided the corporate structure and navigated the regulatory clearances for the largest transnational research collaboratives involving American universities, as well as establishing several of the largest university research collaboratives in the United States.
- We represent the largest K-12 instructional materials company in the world, and the world’s largest testing organization in some of the most important legislating, rulemaking and litigation in education.
- We are lawyers for a major for-profit university in responding to government inquiries and in implementing student aid regulations.