With football season less than a month away, one former Big Law partner who represented the National Football League's New York Giants and New York Jets on the construction of MetLife Stadium is getting ready for a new season of her own.

Mary Jane Augustine, 70, retired from McCarter & English's partnership earlier this year. A construction law expert who in 2010 was named the firm's first female managing partner in New York, Augustine is now a co-principal at Simply Sustainable LLC, a startup company that provides green and highly sustainable building materials and interior finish products.

“I realized that the older you get, if you work for someone else, you're always very vulnerable to being terminated,” said Augustine, a former leader of McCarter & English's construction practice. “I really wanted to do something long-term that I could be in control of—and that's when I realized the best thing I could do was to be an entrepreneur.”