Ling-Ling Nie, general counsel and vice president for ethics and compliance, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta. (Courtesy photo) Ling-Ling Nie, general counsel and vice president for ethics and compliance, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta. (Courtesy photo)

Ling-Ling Nie, the top lawyer for the Georgia Institute of Technology, struggled in law school and at the beginning of her career as she decided what kind of law to practice.

"I had to do some soul-searching," said Nie, a metro Atlanta native who went to the University of Georgia for undergraduate school and Washington & Lee for law school. Upon graduation, she clerked for a local court in Portsmouth, Virginia, leading her to conclude she wasn't interested in criminal law. Then she spent about a year at a firm handling divorces and medical malpractice work, which also failed to spark an interest.

"My skill is more bringing people together," said Nie, who credits that trait to her being a middle child. Hearing of classmates who were working in Washington, D.C., she applied for jobs on the federal government website, usajobs.gov, and in 2007 landed a position at the Department of Treasury running ethics programs.

That focus on conflicts of interest and other safeguards would become more important as the Treasury Department brought in a host of economic experts, often from lucrative jobs in the private sector, during the financial crisis that began in 2008. Nie stayed for five years, working in both the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations, supporting ethics and compliance program for over 2,000 employees.

She also conducted legal review of global and domestic financial regulatory reform proposals related to the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, foreign investments in the U.S., small business lending, financial industry and market operations and proposed Treasury regulations.

While at Treasury, Nie began to wonder what life was like in the corporate sector, and she eventually found a position back in the Atlanta area in the automotive division of Panasonic North America. Within three years she'd risen to become chief compliance officer and assistant general counsel.

One day she saw an online ad for Georgia Tech's general counsel and applied for it, overcoming personal doubts that she needed "an illustrious pedigree," including an Ivy League education, experience in a big law firm and a legacy of family connections in the law. (She is the first lawyer in her family.)

"Higher education wasn't even on my radar," Nie added, but she found herself attracted to Georgia Tech's entrepreneurial spirit and its relationships with companies and the business community.

As the school's general counsel and vice president for ethics and compliance, Nie oversees a team of 45 people. About half are attorneys and the other half are compliance professionals, investigators, risk administration staffers and athletic compliance staffers.

As a part of the state's university system, Georgia Tech itself is represented by the state attorney general's office. But Nie's team provides counsel to 16 affiliated nonprofit organizations, including the athletic association and its research corporation, which controls the school's intellectual property portfolio.

That means Nie is directly involved in the hiring of outside counsel, which she said represents "the largest opportunity" for cost savings that can help the school keep tuition numbers down. Among her criteria, she cited expertise, success rates, flexibility/responsiveness and location, so as to control costs.

Nie said she isn't looking for a question-and-answer "help desk" but rather a firm whose lawyers understand her strategic goals.