Claudius Sokenu, of Cognizant.

Taking on an in-house leadership role at a company dealing with the fallout from a major foreign bribery case is difficult enough.

Claudius Sokenu did it in the middle of a pandemic. 

Sokenu, a former Big Law partner and lawyer for the Securities and Exchange Commission, joined New Jersey-based Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp. as senior vice president, deputy general counsel and global head of legal operations in March. While Cognizant is headquartered in Teaneck, Sokenu is based in Washington, D.C.

Sokenu most recently served as deputy GC, global head of litigation and investigations and global head of compliance for Andeavor, a petroleum refining company that merged with Marathon Petroleum Corp. in 2018. He previously was a partner at Mayer Brown, Arnold & Porter and Shearman & Sterling.

He arrived at Cognizant in the wake of the New Jersey-based global tech services company agreeing to pay $25 million to settle allegations that it violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The firm's former chief legal officer, Steven Schwartz, and its ex-president, Gordon Coburn, allegedly authorized a building contractor to pay more than $3.6 million in bribes to a government official in India.

Schwartz, who faces criminal charges in connection with the alleged bribery scheme, is now suing Cognizant, because it cut off payment to one of the three law firms that represent him.  The company has paid more than $15 million in legal fees for Schwartz. Cognizant's current GC is Matt Friedrich, a former federal prosecutor.

Sokenu spoke recently about his time with the SEC, why he joined Cognizant—though he declined to answer questions about the bribery case—and the difficulties of taking on a new job during the COVID-19 outbreak. The conversation has been edited for clarity and length. 

In what ways did beginning your legal career at the SEC shape you as a lawyer, particularly as an in-house counsel?

Claudius Sokenu: I joined the SEC straight from law school on the honors program. The reason I went there at the time was I had done a master's degree in securities and it made sense to go to the SEC to see how the practical side of that works. But, more importantly, I thought, and I have been proven right on this, that you get thrown in at the deep end. You run cases that are often fairly large and significant. You learn how to try cases and how to build those cases. For me, that was particularly relevant and far more important than being a junior associate in a law firm with 10 layers of supervision before you ever get to do anything meaningful. Learning how to do the work and getting to make judgment calls and litigating against the big firms was a great place to start building my career. How that ultimately leads to being an in-house counsel, you've actually managed matters, you've managed people, you've exercised judgment calls from an early stage of your career—all of which are tools you need to run a well-designed, well-functioning legal department.  

After the SEC, you spent a good bit of time in Big Law. What motivated you to leave private practice and go in-house?

CS: During my private practice experience spanning 16 or 17 years, I did a lot of government investigations, SEC enforcement actions, just given my government background, and a lot of compliance work coming out of that. And what I learned from that is a lot of outside lawyers in private practice don't get to see how things actually work in-house. And my compliance experience allowed me to get in on the ground floor, help businesses design compliance issues and help them with their day-to-day business-making decisions. I enjoy that experience a lot. And so when one of my long-standing clients came to me and asked me to come in-house as deputy general counsel, it seemed like a good place to go do something new and interesting. I have found that my days are not uneventful. They're packed with issues. They're packed with making decisions. People come to you hour after hour asking questions. I've enjoyed that quite a bit. 

Cognizant has gone through some rough patches over the past year. Why join the company now?

CS: I had been at Andeavor for close to two years. When it was acquired by Marathon Petroleum, I didn't see an opportunity there for me. All of us in management at Andeavor left the combined company. So the team members that I was used to working with were all gone within two years. The question for me was: Do I stay here or find something that was more appealing to me? I didn't want to move to Findlay, Ohio, which is where the combined company would be. Nothing against Findlay, Ohio, necessarily. But at or about the same time, Cognizant was looking for somebody to come in and set up litigation, labor and employment, government legal operations. That was attractive to me, in part, because the leadership team at Cognziant was attractive to me. The general counsel had been someone that I'd known of. I'd known of his work on the Enron case. I knew of the leadership team on the legal side and the business side. I thought technology, being what it is and the wave of the future, was another industry that I could get in on and learn that industry. The importance of technology in terms of the wave of the future was far more significant than oil and gas. For me, it seemed like the next step up from where I was and in an industry that was particularly appealing to me. 

Talk with me about your typical day and your primary responsibilities at Cognizant.

CS: My typical day starts with me having a plan of what I'm going to do on that day. But 90% of the time I never get through my list because something comes up, someone needs a question answered or some other unanticipated issue has been brought to the forefront to deal with. In that sense, it's unpredictable. No two days are the same. No two issues are the same. And they span the globe. We are in 238 cities, which means we're trying to nail down hundreds of laws. My portfolio includes litigation across the organization, both U.S. and international. Labor and employment across the globe. Legal operations, which means the running of our legal department, which has in excess of 170 lawyers across the globe, which is not an insignificant law firm if it was a law firm. 

It's kind of a difficult time to be joining a company now with the coronavirus pandemic going on. 

CS: You are absolutely correct that it's a difficult time to join. But we as a company do a lot of work remotely anyway. People work from home. As a tech company, that's not unusual. Just given the nature of the industry, that sort of helped with my transition. I transitioned remotely. I got a laptop and a phone and got to work. I had to move one half of my home to D.C. Doing all of that got me to a start date in March. Then coronavirus hit in the middle of all of that. You try to be flexible. I have still yet to meet most of my team in person. But we're working well together online and videoconferences and trying to make the best of what is a very, very difficult time not just for me but for our country as a whole. And, frankly, my issues pale in comparison to the issues that the rest of the world is dealing with. So I am grateful for that.