Growing up in Peekskill, N.Y. — only 50 miles north of New York City — Eric Greenberg wasn’t thinking about being a lawyer. He was enjoying a childhood surrounded by the beauty of the Hudson Valley. Taking occasional trips into New York City with his dad, a creative director at a big ad agency, was also a highlight of his younger years — and they made him feel close to the city.
Eric’s childhood was pretty typical — he did well in school and watched over his younger brother when his adventurous parents would take off to Europe for a few weeks. “My parents traveled a lot, and I babysat my brother. I made him lunch every day until they came back and showed us their slide show,” he jokes.
But as a champion high school debater, Eric had a sense that law could be in his future — not because he had a strong motivation to go to law school, but because everyone around him told him he should.
Still, after he graduated from Tufts University in 1986 with a bachelor’s degree in political science, Eric went straight to work. He moved to New York City and landed an opportunity with the Coalition to Free Soviet Jews (later absorbed into a broader umbrella Jewish agency)as its director of government affairs. The organization could no longer afford to staff lawyers, he explained, so Eric — sporting premature hair loss that made him look 30 at 22 and his willingness to take a meager salary — stepped into the role.
Even though he wasn’t a practicing lawyer, his work was law adjacent. He regularly traveled to Washington, D.C., advocating for the rights of refuseniks, people in the Soviet Union who were refused permission to emigrate. And he worked closely with high profile lawyers from Big Law firms.
After two years at the Coalition, where incidentally he also met the woman who would become his now-wife and mother of his two children, Eric was ready for a formal education in law.
His next stop was The George Washington Law School in Washington, D.C. “I loved law school,” he says. “I found it to be one of the most intellectually engaging experiences of my life because it’s so intense. It was far from the cutthroat environment you see in movies. There was tremendous camaraderie.”
Eric sat down with us to discuss his unique career in law — spent mostly at large law firms before taking on a general counsel role at Cox Media Group in 2021.
Tell me about your career path when you graduated from George Washington Law?
All the people who led me to law school were big New York law firm partners. That’s what I was drawn to: the training at a big firm. I could use Big Law firm experience to go into government and then return to private practice. So that’s what I did.
When I got to law school, I was reading the book The Wise Men, about the cohort of statemen that guided U.S. Cold War policy. In a section of the book about Dean Acheson, Harry Truman’s secretary of state, the book references that Acheson began his career at “the prestigious Washington law firm of Covington & Burling.” That’s all I knew: that after clerking for Justice Brandeis, Acheson joined this prestigious DC firm that I’d never heard of. But that kind of firm where people go in and out of government was the path I was interested in. So, I wrote down a note to myself: “Covington & Burling — find out if it still exists.” Turns out, Covington did still exist, and, after clerking on the federal district court in DC, I landed an associate position there.
A few years later, I did a stint in government at the DOJ Office of Legal Counsel. OLC focuses on advising the Attorney General and the White House on constitutional and presidential power issues (OLC). It was an exhilarating place to be. But after a couple of years, Covington, which was growing its corporate practice, asked if was interested in coming back. At the time, my wife and I had just had a second child, and doing constitutional law didn’t seem like the best path to supporting my family. I figured this was an opportunity to get training as a corporate lawyer. If it went well, I could become partner. And if it didn’t, I could use it as a springboard to go in-house. It did go well, and I became partner.
I became one of the guys that worked on deals, mostly mergers-and-acquisitions and interesting joint ventures. Covington had – and still has – a first class FCC regulatory practice. I worked closely with that group and eventually, I became the guy people called for deals that had complicated regulatory issues.
What other Big Law firms did you work for?
After nine years at Covington, I was recruited by Paul Hastings, which had a strong corporate M&A practice. It was exciting because that work would allow me to do bigger deals and capture a richer set of deal work in the media industry. And the deals kept getting bigger and bigger in the media space in the mid-2000s.
I spent eight years at Paul Hastings and then moved over to Perkins Coie to diversify my practice. By then, I had a lot of legacy media clients and Perkins had a very strong tech client-base We were both intrigued by the lines that were beginning to blur between media and tech.
When did you become interested in practicing law in-house?
I once asked a friend who was inhouse about becoming a GC. He said, “You could never be a GC because senior partners at law firms don’t become GCs — except in this one narrow circumstance where the company is in a regulated industry, and they need great expertise. Then, maybe they’ll look to a law firm partner for that experience.” I filed that away.
Then, after I was at Perkins Coie for a few years, I got a call. Someone gave my name to the folks at Cox Media Group, which had just been acquired by the private equity firm Apollo Global Management. They were looking for a new GC. Now, I’m the guy with that deep industry experience. I recalled my friend’s comment and realized this is my shot. And I was excited to take it.
This opportunity seemed to come at the perfect time.
One of the things I love about law is doing new and interesting things. One of the attractions of becoming a partner was that I had two kids I needed to support and send to college. The stability that law firm life afforded me was very attractive.
By the time Cox Media came along, my kids were out of college. I told my wife I just wanted to do interesting things. There was a part of me that really wanted something new. The GC role at Cox was very much in my sweet spot, but with new and interesting challenges.
What did you find to be the most enjoyable, as well as the most difficult, parts of moving in-house?
1. One of the things I love most is being at the table when the first germ of an opportunity or whiff of a problem exists. As outside counsel, you often get called when the deal has developed or the problem has ripened. I like being there at the creation — being able to help steer the ship toward the opportunity or away from the crisis. That’s new and exhilarating.
2. Because of my experience, I know a fair amount about this industry. I have been working with people that run media businesses for 20 years. It’s a business and group of people that I’d come to know, and it operates in a regulatory regime I am familiar with.
3. But there were also parts of the job that were very new. Yes, I am an experienced lawyer and can be a steady hand when things are happening fast and are fraught. I know a lot about this industry and the legal issues. But what I did not know about was how to run a legal department. I did not know about creating a budget or understanding operations. Those are things that I have learned.
What are some of your biggest priorities as GC at Cox Media Group?
One of them is to expand the legal function to include an external affairs initiative so we’re building relationships with people in state and federal government and the executive branch. More than ever, local broadcasting is uniquely close to the audience and communities it serves. That’s a story that needs to be told in policy circles.
There’s a perception that journalism is at risk. But it’s thriving at the radio and TV level and it’s more important than ever. This year, our company was the first TV group to ever be a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize.
Internally, as a leader of a legal department, we’re focused on operating with financial discipline and cost efficiency. How do we deploy technology that’s judicious and cost effective, but also innovative? We’re trying to build and maintain a modern legal department – that’s both exhilarating and a challenge.
I’m also delighted to help the board and CEO to think about strategic issues. The role of the GC as a strategic advisor is such an important development in the evolution of the inhouse role – and it’s one of the most gratifying.
Please tell me about the mentors you had growing up in your legal career.
There have been and still are mentors popping up at various junctures of my career.
First, there are two law professors at George Washington Law School that were great mentors to me. They are now my friends. I worked for both at the DOJ. I am very grateful for their support – then and still.
I also feel very fortunate to have mentors at key junctures of my career. That ranges from senior partners when I was a younger lawyer to members of our board now who care about my career and share advice, encouragement and feedback.
What’s your life like outside of work. What are some of your hobbies? Family?
I’m a big reader, and I love movies and TV. You will find me, for better and worse, sitting on the couch reading a book or watching TV — often doing those two things at the same time.
Stories and storytelling, in some ways, are my passion. My father was a writer and loved language. That’s made me a book lover and someone who’s still passionate about words, even as a drafter of contracts. I got my love of language from him. He died about seven years ago. I recall one of our last conversations was about the word “eponymous,” and what a great word it is.
What advice would you give a young lawyer who wants to be a GC someday?
Don’t wait as long as I did. If you want to be a GC, the training you get at a great law firm is indispensable. I still draw from things I learned as a young lawyer. But once you have that training under your belt, go in-house. But go to a great in-house legal department — independent of what industry you’re interested in.
That’s the key. Get the best training, develop your career, find good mentors, keep your eye on the prize but not so single-mindedly that you pursue it at the expense of the mentors and training you need to actually get there.