Lauren Wylie

Frost Brown Todd LLC has gained a member with 20 years of in-house and general counsel experience working mainly on government contracts for its Pittsburgh office, the firm has announced.

Lauren Wylie, who was most recently general counsel to CB&I Areva MOX Services LLC, a joint venture with a government contract for a plant to reprocess weapons-grade plutonium into fuel rods for nuclear power plants, joined the firm last month, according to an Oct. 31 announcement.

She said she had worked with attorneys from Frost Brown as her outside counsel on litigation. As the government canceled the project and it wound down, she transitioned into working with the firm as a member, she said.

“We had hired Frost Brown Todd, and through that I got to know a lot of the attorneys, a lot of the practice groups there,” Wylie told Law360. “As that program was closed out, rather than go into another corporate position, I connected with them.”

With two decades of experience mostly working with corporations on government contracts, procurement and regulations, Wylie said she will continue to focus her practice on those areas within Frost Brown’s construction practice group, though she said the corporate clients she brings would also be able to draw upon the firm’s labor and employment practices.

“If I was going to go to a firm, I wanted to go to a comprehensive one,” she said. “Most of my clients are corporate, and corporations are multifaceted.”

Her practice will use her experience working on regulatory issues for companies with government contracts, as well as financing government-backed projects from the U.S. and
internationally, Wylie said. She said she is looking forward to getting back into some litigation work, which was usually handled by outside counsel in her corporate past, particularly before the U.S. Court of Federal Claims and the Court of International Trade.

“Adding Lauren Wylie to our membership is a great expansion of Frost Brown Todd’s strong and growing government contracts practice,” said Daniel Edwards, a member of the firm’s construction and government contracts practice groups. “Her experience as general counsel, handling countless complex government contracting issues, gives us a unique skill set in our region and frankly

nationally. Few lawyers have Lauren’s depth of experience, particularly in negotiating with the Department of Energy.”

Wylie said that Frost Brown’s friendly, Midwestern, “salt-of-the-earth” values were also attractive to her and made her assimilation into the firm a quick one.

“The folks here, even though they have offices hither and yon, they still want to get to know you,” she said. “I know at least one attorney, if not multiple attorneys, in each of our offices, and I’ve only been here a month.”

Wylie has a bachelor’s degree from Missouri State University, a master’s certificate from Villanova University and her law degree from Duquesne University School of Law.

Editing by Jack Karp.