Robert P. Young Jr. Courtesy photo.

The first time Michigan State University offered Robert Young Jr. the job of general counsel earlier this year, he turned it down. This week he changed his mind and accepted the post.

Young, 60, a former chief justice of the Michigan Supreme Court, is of counsel in the Lansing office of Dickinson Wright. Since mid-February, when the school's then-GC left under pressure from the Larry Nassar sexual abuse scandal, Young has been serving as special counsel to MSU.

In that role he oversaw the lawsuit negotiations that recently resulted in a $500 million tentative settlement for Nassar's victims, and continues to direct MSU's responses to multiple investigations.

Corporate Counsel spoke with the witty and affable Young on Wednesday about taking on the GC job beginning June 1. The conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

Corporate Counsel: Why take on this challenge now, at this point in your career?

Robert Young: Because I'm failing at retirement. And because having been special counsel, I became familiar with the university and have come to have some fondness for it. The reason for that budding affection is that my good friend [former Gov. John Engler, who appointed Young to the state Supreme Court in 1999] has become the interim president, and he asked me. I declined previously, but when Kristine Zayko [interim general counsel] also decided to depart, it left a large hole in the general counsel's office.

It seemed the need is one I could fill. And I have been a general counsel previously and understood the role, and I've had a lot of involvement already with the board. If you've ever been involved with a university, or even a large private school, you know there is always something happening that you have to attend to. It is not a boring portfolio. I thought I was well suited, and have something to offer.

And by the way, it's fun.

You left private practice once before in your career to become a general counsel at AAA Michigan for three years before joining the court; do you prefer being a general counsel to private practice?

Each one is different. It's like saying, which one of your children do you like more?  I have enjoyed doing the very thing I was doing at the time.

[Since retiring from the court a year ago] I was having a very successful reintroduction into private practice. I was wondering if the world has changed so much that I wouldn't be as effective. But I had my first argument in 26 years before a federal court with a successful result. So people out there were beginning to respond.

I've always been blessed and able to do things and have fun in things I was doing. I didn't expect to reprise my role as general counsel, but it came into being.

What are your top priorities?

Resolving the Nassar matter with finality, mastery of the new role in a broader sense, and providing excellent legal service to the client. And making sure that the lawyers are happy and effective, and that the clients are happy, too.

What was your role in the lawsuit negotiations with Nassar's victims? Did you actually do the negotiating?

I led the negotiations. It was a team effort, really, with a very talented group of lawyers from Skadden [Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom], Miller Canfield [Miller, Canfield, Paddock and Stone] and Latham & Watkins. With the president's deep involvement, we set the priorities and directed the strategy. Somebody from the organization has to have an overarching vision of the mediation process, and that was me.

The university is still subject to a number of ongoing investigations; how involved are you in those, and will you continue your involvement?

Yes, I am directing the responses to those, and I'll continue to be involved until they are completed.

After you become general counsel, will you continue teaching your law class in pretrial advocacy?

Yes. I enjoy dealing with students, and I've done this since I was in private practice [the first time]. I was tutoring some Wayne State [University law] students in civil procedure, and realized what an abstract proposition it was for a student who didn't even know what an interrogatory was.

I decided to teach a course on how to operationalize civil procedure. It's highly interactive, with the class divided into plaintiffs and defendants on an employment matter. Every week they have a written assignment, such as writing an interrogatory or preparing a witness.

A lot of graduates have written me after a few years to say that it was the most valuable course they took in law school.

Some critics, such as the Nassar plaintiffs, have said you are not the right man for the job because your record shows you often rule against sex abuse victims. They think you can't lead the culture change that is needed at MSU right now. How do you feel about that?

What I understand the law to require as a judge, and what I have to do or need to do in this role are entirely different. In those [sexual abuse] cases the question was to what extent does the employer have vicarious liability for a criminal act. It is perfectly useful to talk about a particular act, like sexual misconduct, forgetting about [the fact that] there is whole range of criminal acts an employee can do, and that you must ask if the employer then is also vicariously liable for those acts.

To have that would require a lot of different behavior [from employers] that I don't think the law imposes. What sort of due diligence must you do on every employee? How prescient must an employer be? You [as a judge] have to think more broadly of the whole range of vicarious liability.

It is different from being a general counsel. My role as a judge does not foreshadow what my role as an advocate is.

The MSU legal department has lost two key leaders, each with 20 years' experience. How will you go about repairing a legal department that has been so damaged by loss and criticism?

First of all, I'm new. To the extent that my predecessors had baggage concerning how they did or didn't advise various units within the university, I don't have that baggage. I get a little bit of a break by being the new kid on the block.

Second, I have a very long record of reform. I reformed the general counsel function at AAA.

I had a 60 person in-house law firm with roughly 9,000 cases a year coming in, and we did about two-thirds of those; and I made significant reforms there. When I became chief justice, I made significant reforms [at the Supreme Court]. So I imagine as I see opportunities to improve how this office functions and provides service to clients, we'll make those changes.

Is there anything else you'd like to add about Michigan State or your new job?

No. I'm not a millennial, so I don't feel the need to overshare.