Covering corporate law departments and in-house attorneys for Texas Lawyer and other ALM publications, reporter Kristen Rasmussen profiles Monica Berry, general counsel and assistant secretary at ExamSoft Worldwide Inc., a leading provider of educational assessment technology.

With more than 19 years of working with various educational and certification programs, ExamSoft delivers both high- and low-stakes exams in a secure and stable environment. It has more than 1,300 current clients (primarily postgraduate programs such as law, medical, nursing and pharmacy schools) and more than 20 million exams delivered yearly. ExamSoft has more than 100 employees in offices located in Dallas and Delray Beach, Florida.

Legal Team

Berry serves as ExamSoft's first and only in-house lawyer and keeps the majority of the company's work in-house. Specifically, she advises the company on all legal matters and assesses risk; reviews and drafts contracts; manages litigation and outside counsel; interacts with the company's private equity owners; counsels on compliance, financing, insurance, employment, IP, M&A, software as a service (SaaS), insurance and corporate governance matters; and works with the human resources department on employment issues to regularly update and revise the employee handbook and to draft other needed policies. Berry drafted several of the company's policies, including those that govern data breaches, document retention, purchasing and contract approval, social media and IT.

Keeping so much work in-house “allows me to be on top of all the legal issues that come up and to keep costs down significantly,” she says.   

Outside Counsel

Less than 20 percent of ExamSoft's legal work is sent to outside counsel. But when it is, Berry turns to Baker McKenzie for some international matters; Haynes and Boone for General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliance; and Littler Mendelson for employment matters. For IT matters, the company has used Wick Phillips and Dallas-based Richard Law Group.

Daily Duties

“My daily duties can range from negotiating with customers regarding the company's master software license and services agreement, advising the executive team on risk concerns and helping the sales team respond to an RFP/open bidding process,” Berry says.

Some days, however, are spent solely on corporate governance, employment and insurance matters, she adds.

Route to the Top

After graduating from the University of Wisconsin Law School, Berry served as a pro se law clerk/staff attorney for the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York in Brooklyn. She then moved to Dallas to clerk for Judge Steven Felsenthal, then-chief judge of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Texas. Following that clerkship, she was an associate at Bracewell & Giuliani (now Bracewell) for nearly six years. She left the firm to go in-house as a senior attorney at Hostess Brands Inc., followed by the position of assistant GC at Elemetal. She became the GC at ExamSoft in November 2015. 

Personal

An Albuquerque, New Mexico, native, Berry says she swims, takes pilates, enjoys concertgoing and recently attended and “loved” an aerial silks class.

“But my biggest hobby is writing nonfiction,” she says, adding that in February she participated in the “Stick Together” Oral Fixation storytelling show, in which seven storytellers told their own personal true stories in front of a live audience of more than 300 people at Moody Performance Hall in Dallas' Arts District.

Last Book

“Saints for All Occasions,” by J. Courtney Sullivan, a novel in which two sisters make unimaginable decisions in order to keep a family secret.

“It kept me on the edge of my seat,” Berry says.