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Business
Law
Nicholas Conte
Woods, Rogers &
Hazlegrove
by Glenn Garelik
Nicholas Conte |
Nicholas
Conte may be a lawyer, but he has business in his blood.
Chairman of the Corporate Law Group at Roanoke-based
Woods, Rogers & Hazlegrove, Conte likes to get inside
the workings of a client’s company with an eye
towards customizing solutions to problems. “What
I like most is ... getting into details with the decision-maker
at the company and trying to tailor something that really
fits them, rather than just being off-the-shelf.”
The
key, says Conte, is “putting yourself in your client’s
shoes.” Having a lawyer who knows both the business
and its leadership helps in dealing with current problems
and avoiding future ones. “Some of the trick of
doing business law is looking down the road, trying
to help the client position itself so that it doesn’t
encounter problems in the future,” he says.
Indeed,
says Neal Keesee, Jr., who chairs Woods Rogers’
business section, developing relationships is one of
Conte’s most conspicuous strengths. “Nick
is open and easy going,” Keesee says. “Everybody
feels like he’s a friend. He [helps] foster understanding.”
Conte, 40, especially relishes the process of negotiation.
“The most memorable transactions in which I’ve
been involved are those where no mutually acceptable
solution seemed possible, but I helped formulate an
approach that made it possible to close a deal or otherwise
achieve a client’s goals.”
One
of the arrangements that Conte helped midwife was the
creation in 1999 of the Carilion Biomedical Institute,
a collaboration among Carilion Health System in Roanoke,
Virginia Tech in Blacksburg and the University of Virginia
in Charlottesville. With Conte’s assistance, the
parties created a structure to fund research in biomedical
technologies and then license and shepherd those new
technologies to market. “Nick is a particularly
good listener,” says Carilion Institute President
Dennis Fischer. “He digs in and understands, to
the point where he can provide solutions where we might
not even have known there could be a problem.”
A
case in point was last year’s smooth start of Biophile,
the institute’s first portfolio company, built
around a cutting-edge storage and retrieval system for
biological samples. In less than a year and a half,
the technology was in production — a feat for which
the Piedmont Technology Council in Charlottesville gave
Biophile its “Rocket Award” last April.
The
speed of that company’s launch may be due to Conte’s
willingness to put in 18-hour days. As if that’s
not enough, says Woods Rogers colleague Michael Urbanski,
“Clients call him at home at 2 in the morning on
the weekend” — and he makes himself available.
Still, Conte says, he manages to make time for his son,
8, and daughter, 13. It’s one of the advantages
of living in manageable Roanoke, he says. His office
is close enough to home that it’s easy go home
and see his children while burning the midnight oil.
Conte credits his parents, both immigrants from Italy,
for teaching him the importance of family. They also
taught him diligence and integrity, he says — “to
give value for what people pay for. If you’re hired
to do a job, you do it to the best of your ability and
stick with it until you’re done.”
Another
value that Conte upholds, he says, is loyalty —
something that he says he feels for Woods Rogers, where
he has practiced ever since getting his law degree at
the College of William and Mary. “My law firm is
the kind of place where... people take an interest in
you and give you opportunities,” he says. “It’s
a place of open-door access.”
Return
to Virginia Business - December 2002
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