Harvard University is promoting its next vice president and general counsel from within—a deputy who has been in-house at the school nearly as long as her predecessor.

Effective June 1, Diane Lopez is taking the legal reins from Robert Iuliano, who is leaving after 16 years in the top role to lead Gettysburg College, the university said in a statement.

Lopez joined the Harvard legal department as a university attorney in 1994 and was promoted to deputy GC in 2011. In that position, she handled several issues, including embryonic stem cell research, intellectual property, laboratory safety, scientific misconduct and privacy matters, as well as student affairs.

And it's partly the wide variety of work that makes her job so fascinating and enjoyable, Lopez said in a statement. Through a Harvard spokesperson, she declined to comment about her new position.

“Every day there's something new,” she said. “There are tons of issues in the news. You're working for people who are doing fantastic things in the world. You're associated with an institution that's trying its hardest every day to do the right thing on many, many dimensions.”

Prior to joining Harvard, Lopez, who grew up in a low-income, largely Puerto Rican and black neighborhood and graduated from Columbia Law School, was a commercial litigator for eight years in the New York office of O'Melveny & Myers.

In her new role, Lopez will lead an office of about 17 attorneys and legal professionals, as well as administrative staff, and serve as chief legal adviser to Harvard president Larry Bacow and other university leaders.

According to Iuliano, Lopez deserves a large share of the credit for the office's accomplishments.

“The OGC handles, and handles well, a remarkably broad array of complex and important issues for all the schools and units at Harvard,” he said in the statement. “So much of what the office is—responsive, client-focused, values driven, engaged, and, yes, fun—reflects Diane's imprint as its deputy and long-serving member.”

Iuliano and Lopez agreed that, given Harvard's status as a premier educational institution and the cutting-edge nature of much faculty research, the in-house legal work is likely to continue unabated in the coming years.

During Iuliano's tenure as GC, for example, Harvard agreed to pay $26.5 million to settle a civil complaint about investments a professor and a former staff member made while working on a federal contract to help privatize Russia's post-Soviet economy.

“Many lawyers' careers have one or two cases that get national attention,” Lopez said. “Here, almost every week you have something that you're working on that is at least going to get attention in the Crimson, as well as local and often national media attention.”