Spotlighting T 14 “SCALING
SUMMITS” Camilla Eng BY PATRICK FOLLIARD
Camilla Eng has taken an unorthodox path to general counsel. Her stints in the San Francisco City Attorney’s Office and Washington’s Capitol Hill prepared her for the myriad challenges that come with running the world’s largest plastic pipe manufacturer’s legal department.
DIVERSITY & THE BAR® MARCH/APRIL 2012
hese days Camilla Eng is regularly asked: Just how did she transition from a deputy city attorney for the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Offi ce to become general counsel for J-M Manufacturing, Co., Inc. (JM Eagle), the world’s largest manufac- turer of plastic pipes? During a recent panel discussion at the annual conference of the National
Asian American Bar Association (NAPABA), she was asked the question again. “T e two jobs may sound very diff erent, I know, but the actual practice is more similar than one might think,” Eng explains. “As general counsel, I often lean on my experience as an in-house attorney for two of the three proprietary departments of the City of Los Angeles (Los Angeles World Airports and the Department of Water and Power) with respect to strengthening my partnerships with business units and managing outside counsel. T ese are fundamental skills for all in-house lawyers, and I was lucky enough to acquire this experience early in my career as a govern- ment lawyer.” Since joining the Los Angeles-based JM Eagle
Manufacturing, Co., Inc. as its general counsel in late 2009, Eng has created the company’s now four-person legal department from the ground up; and today, she oversees all legal matters for the company and reports directly to the company’s senior executives including its CEO. Much of Eng’s ever-expanding skill set has come through baptism by fi re. Two months into her tenure at JM Eagle, Eng embarked on a long-planned trip to Tanzania to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. She reached the storied peak’s summit in four days. When she returned to work she found a crowd of people gathered outside of her offi ce. “I’d hoped they were waiting to congratu- late me, but that wasn’t the case. We’d been named as defendants in a whistleblower lawsuit brought under the False Claims Act, which allows citizens to bring lawsuits on behalf of the United States and receive a portion of the settlement’s proceeds. Suddenly, I was up to my ears in litigation. “A whistleblower lawsuit requires niche expertise,”
she explains, “so I immediately reached to the very best outside counsel while doing my best to remain organized and thoughtful. At times like this, knee-jerk decisions are rarely ever the smart ones.” Eng’s dynamic career has not gone unnoticed by
her peers. Golden State Foods Corporate Vice President and General Counsel John Page fi rst met Eng at an Association of Corporate Counsel (Southern California
MCCA.COM
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