When attorney Mike Leahy joined the American International Group in September 2003, he had no way of knowing what was in store. Not long after he joined up, the company became entangled in legal messes over alleged accounting fraud and bid-rigging, and Leahy and his colleagues had their hands full.
Then, just when it looked like that legal storm was beginning to die down, September 2008 rolled around, and the company faced the financial crisis, which brought a new series of vexing legal challenges. “I wandered into what looked like a pretty safe and uneventful in-house legal assignment that turned out to be radically different, but ultimately more interesting and fulfilling than had I been at a company that didn’t encounter these kinds of issues,” says Leahy, who is now deputy general counsel and head of litigation at AIG.
