Power player
GREGORY BUTLER
Senior vice president and general counsel, Northeast Utilities
Age 52
COMPANY PROFILE
Northeast Utilities is a utility holding company for
The Connecticut Light & Power Co., Western Mas-
sachusetts Electric Co., Public Service Co. of New
Hampshire and Yankee Gas Services Co. North-
east Utilities has about 1.9 million customers, with
revenues of about $5.8 billion and 6,200 employees.
Headquarters is in Hartford, Conn.
LEGAL TEAM AND OUTSIDE COUNSEL
General Counsel Gregory Butler heads a team of 40
lawyers and 18 staff. Nearly 60% of the utility’s legal
work is handled in-house with the rest performed by
outside counsel. Firms that Butler calls upon include
Washington’s Steptoe & Johnson LLP; Carmody &
Torrance of Waterbury, Conn.; Nixon Peabody; New
York’s Skadden, Arps, Meagher, Slate & Flom; and
Boston-based Brown Rudnick and Mintz, Levin, Cohn,
Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo.
The work runs from slip-and-fall cases to mergers
and acquisitions. “We are a full-service law firm and
we have the full range of cases,” Butler said. He
outsources matters that demand extra resources or
present legal issues the department hasn’t handled
before.
Diversity is a priority. “Our department is quite
diverse, and this adds to the overall quality of our
work,” Butler said. “We are one of the founders of
the Connecticut Lawyers Collaborative for Diversity.
Diversity is an important variable in evaluating outside counsel, and this year we partnered with one of
our major firms to create a diversity scholar position
OUTSIDE COUNSEL
COMPANY
NORTHEAST UTILITIES
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
for a summer associate. We have also developed a
relationship with the David Clarke School of Law at
the University of the District of Columbia to bring
diverse law students to N.U. for summer internships.
We also encourage pro bono work and many of our
attorneys are very active in a variety of ways.”
DAILY DUTIES
Butler arrives at work “a bit before 7 a.m. Often I
have coffee with the CEO where we can quietly dis-
cuss some issues before the day really gets going,”
he said. “Once the day is fully under way, it is often
consumed by meetings and presentations. Often, I
leave at night with 10 things I want to accomplish
the next day; by 9 the next morning it has been com-
pletely replaced by 10 other items more urgent.”
Butler’s department is organized into practice
groups, each led by a deputy or assistant general
counsel.
Given the range of issues demanding his attention,
Butler has to be both “a generalist and a specialist, depending on the issue and the day.” The work
involves a combination of economic, environmental
and energy policy. Butler’s biggest challenge is to
“make sure you are providing value to customers
and shareholders.”
LABOR & EMPLOYMENT
Carmody & Torrance
LITIGATION
Carmody & Torrance
