Shaping a Legal Career in the Beverage Industry: How Brigid O’Hara ’20 Turned Clinic Experience Into Compliance Leadership

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As Compliance Counsel at Wine.com, Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University alumna Brigid O’Hara ’20, shares that her experience with the Food and Farm Business Law Clinic at Pace Haub Law played a significant role in shaping the career she has today.

During her time as a law student, Brigid was selected to participate in an internship with Heineken. It was through the internship experience that Brigid was introduced to different people in the industry, including her future boss. “The connections I made through the Food and Farm Business Law Clinic were integral in landing an interview and ultimately a job at Wine.com.”

Brigid reflects more broadly on how her legal education and extracurricular experiences at Haub Law helped guide her path. “I was able to determine what type of law I wanted to practice, in a general litigation versus transactional sense, and the content area I was particularly interested in. I feel very lucky to have had a clinic experience like the one I did, because it was instrumental in understanding the type of practice I really wanted to do, which was transactional, business, hopefully beverage oriented, work.”

In addition to her internship at Heineken, Brigid also interned with Reckitt Benckiser and quickly realized how much she enjoyed the in-house legal role. “I knew I wanted to get to an in-house position as fast as possible, and luckily, I was able to skip the more traditional route of 2-3 years at a firm before jumping in-house, which I am super thankful for!”

Brigid describes her experience with the Food and Farm Business Clinic as a one-of-a-kind opportunity. “I absolutely loved working in the clinic. I loved that I had two separate clients and handled the matters for them with other students, as if working with other associates in a firm. The seminar portion of the clinic was also very interesting because we were learning about the other students’ clients and the various issues they were handling, which meant the experience covered a massive range of business, food, farming, and beverage related topics.” Brigid recalls that one of her clinic clients was a non-profit and she helped obtain tax exempt status and accomplish other incorporation related necessities. In her current role, Brigid does a lot with her company’s corporate filings and handles many tax matters, so she notes that having a foundation in working with clients about these types of matters was great.

After graduating from law school, Brigid received an LLM in Corporate Compliance from Fordham Law School. “I started my career in 2021, freshly off a massive change in the alcohol industry stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic. The industry, and my company specifically, really had a boom in 2020, as sales for alcohol consumption at home drastically increased. The industry continued to change at the end of 2021 and into 2022, as the trend of buying alcohol for at home consumption shifted back down after the COVID bubble and continued to decrease to below the levels of before the pandemic. Many alcohol companies are having to handle lower than average sales, as the younger generations continue to trend towards not consuming as much alcohol as their predecessors did at their age.”

Brigid notes that this downward trend has forced marketing and sales departments at alcohol companies to be more creative in how they draw people in and keep them coming back as a returning customer. “The industry as a whole, manufacturers, wholesalers, and retailers, are having to face tough decisions on how to handle different and lower alcohol consumption.” Despite this, Brigid shares that, “We are currently in an exciting time in the alcohol law world, as many of the people who have dominated and run the industry for decades are retiring. This is leaving a gap for younger attorneys to make a space and name for themselves. It will be very interesting to see how the shoes of the people who have made the alcohol industry what it is today will be filled.”

Today, in her role as Compliance Counsel for Wine.com, Brigid describes her role as varied and covers a wide range of topics, which is one of the main reasons she wanted to work in-house. “I work closely with essentially every department at the company: human resources, marketing, merchandising, finance, engineering/development, and operations. I handle employment matters, reviewing contracts and leases, approve marketing campaigns, conduct tax compliance, handle data security and privacy, maintain website terms and conditions, among others. The legal department is also responsible for licensing for alcohol and business purposes, conducting research for various reasons, staying up to date on all applicable new laws that may be passed, handling certain customer escalations, being the direct contact for state and federal agencies, to name a few.”

I felt that Pace Haub Law could offer me so many different options and a broad and great legal education. And, I was right. I absolutely loved law school. I had great classes, great professors, made great connections, and I was able to really nail down what type of career I wanted through the opportunities and experiences I had in school.

Brigid remains grateful for her law school experience. “I was initially drawn to Pace Haub Law because of the environmental program because I always had a passion for nature and animals and thought I could turn that into working in a career that would fight to help the environment, potentially even in a lobbying position. Additionally, I interned at a law firm in college that specialized in alcohol law, so I was also drawn to the Food and Farm Business Law Clinic, but I also did not want to choose a school based on one specialization just in case I did not love it. I felt that Pace Haub Law could offer me so many different options and a broad and great legal education. And, I was right. I absolutely loved law school. I had great classes, great professors, made great connections, and I was able to really nail down what type of career I wanted through the opportunities and experiences I had in school.”

As far as advice for students or graduates who want to get involved in the alcoholic beverage industry, Brigid shares that it is a very small industry where everyone knows each other. “The more people you can meet, the more you can make appearances at conferences, possibly publish papers or articles, the better off you will be to continue a career in this field. Your ability to stay in this industry will greatly increase the more you get to know the big players. It’s a super fun, super relaxed, but very intelligent group of people; things are always interesting in the alcohol regulatory world!” Brigid even met her fiancé through working in the alcohol beverage industry – he works for a national liquor licensing law firm.

A self-described massive reader, Brigid spends a lot of her spare time reading for fun. She also loves anything that is outside and in nature – hiking, kayaking, camping, just taking walks, viewing sights, being by bodies of water, etc. In the winter, when outdoor activities are more limited, Brigid puts her art degree to work and spends as much time as she can painting and drawing.