He’s been a partner at a top law firm and worked in-house to help an international corporation navigate explosive growth. David C. Lowance Jr. ’98, the new senior assistant dean for career development, is ready to shift gears and bring his wide-ranging experiences to leading career counseling efforts at the University of Virginia School of Law.

“When this job became available, it jumped out at me as an opportunity to draw on my experience to do what I really love — mentoring and developing lawyers — at scale,” Lowance said. “It had always been my hope that I would do well enough in a legal career to have enough time for a meaningful plan B, and I can’t imagine a better second career than getting to work with UVA Law students to launch their own careers.” 

Lowance officially began his new role on Tuesday. He mostly recently served as chief legal officer for Insight Global for 11 years, during a period when the company, now 35,000 employees strong, grew from generating $750 million to $4 billion in revenue. Before that, he was a corporate lawyer and partner at Alston & Bird for 15 years, spending most of that time doing corporate and securities work in a variety of industries, including health care.

Dean Leslie Kendrick ’06 said Lowance brings a fresh perspective and a commitment to mentoring to his role.

“David has had a remarkable career, from working as a partner at a leading law firm to building the legal structure for a rapidly growing global corporation,” she said. “With his experiences mentoring young lawyers and thinking strategically, he has an excellent understanding of how to prepare our students to launch and manage their careers.”

Lowance will be building upon a highly successful student-centered model engineered by Kevin M. Donovan, who is stepping into a senior career counselor role after 15 years at the helm of Career Development.

For the past two years, the Law School has been No. 1 in the country for the percentage of graduates in full-time, long-term jobs requiring bar passage, according to American Bar Association data — a metric considered the gold standard for high-quality legal employment. This summer, Above the Law named UVA its No. 1 law school, largely based on career outcomes. The school is also No. 5 in alumni earning clerkships at the U.S. Supreme Court from 2007-2023.

Lowance said one of his goals in leading UVA Law’s Career Development team — which includes the Office of Private Practice, the Mortimer Caplin Public Service Center and the Office of Judicial Clerkships — is continuity.

“I’m going to hopefully continue the great work that the Career Development office has done, helping connect students with top-notch employers and make well-informed decisions about the best places to launch their legal careers,” Lowance said.

He’s already reached out to colleagues in his law firm network to better understand current trends in the legal industry and how the Law School can be a good partner to employers.

“These conversations were helpful, as we are all coming to grips with a changing job market, but they were also reassuring because the two universal truths that came back from my conversations were that they loved working with our Career Development team and that they want more UVA lawyers,” he said. “Everybody’s saying, ‘I don’t feel like I’m getting my fair share. How can I get more of your students?’”

An Atlanta native for most of his life, Lowance graduated from Princeton with an A.B. from the Woodrow Wilson School of Domestic and International Affairs (now the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs), where he studied race and the law.

Learning about the Civil Rights Movement in a freshman seminar was a revelation because his high school history classes never managed to get past World War II.

“I realized that I was the product of a city where I didn’t really know all of the history,” he said. “I got interested in issues of race and then the law as a tool both for good and bad in terms of social change.”

In addition to being a graduate of the Law School, Lowance has family connections to UVA. Among his many relatives who attended UVA and UVA Law, his grandfather, Joseph McConnell, who was also a lawyer, served as University rector.

“He was a larger-than-life figure for me growing up and inspired me to at least consider becoming a lawyer,” Lowance said. “Continuing a tradition of service to the school is very gratifying.”

The several law schools he considered all had “excellent programs.”

“But I thought law school can be stressful enough,” he said. “You might as well go somewhere that you can also relax and enjoy life a little bit.”

That sealed the deal for UVA.

His experience at the Law School reinforced its reputation for a culture of “collegiality and collaboration,” he added.

As a student at UVA, Lowance was “an enthusiastic but mediocre” North Grounds Softball League player, competed in the William Minor Lile Moot Court competition, and also spent time on the student soccer team and on one of his favorite pastimes, golfing.

During his first summer, he worked at Troutman Sanders (now Troutman Pepper), then split his second summer with Troutman and Alston & Bird. He joined the latter firm’s litigation team after graduating, but soon realized it wasn’t a perfect fit and transitioned to corporate law, before moving in-house and being responsible for a wide variety of legal matters.

When he decided to make the leap to in-house counsel, Insight Global was the first opportunity that came along, “but it was also the best one I could imagine.” The business, which grew rapidly during Lowance’s time there, is an international staffing and services company with more than 70 offices in the U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom and the Philippines. The growth of the company allowed Lowance to both enjoy counseling and problem-solving for a large organization but also recruiting, developing and maturing a team of lawyers that grew from just one to 14 during his tenure. The job also gave him the opportunity to work with non-lawyer adjacent teams and functions, like contract management, human resources and security.

“If there is anything I hope to be able to bring to the students from my experiences, it’s an understanding of what it’s really like to be a lawyer in a wide variety of practice areas, not only based on a love of the subject matter but with a full understanding of what it feels like to be a counselor day-to-day in different positions, whether as an in-house lawyer or as outside counsel.”

Despite a busy work schedule, Lowance found time for community service. He was a board member for the Atlanta-based nonprofit Literacy Action, which focused on adult literacy. He was a member of the business and finance section of the Atlanta Bar, and ultimately became chair of the section. He is also currently a board member, and has served as vice chair of, the Global Village Project, a middle school in Atlanta that educates refugee girls.

“I love working with GVP, both because one can see from close range the impact a tailored school experience can have re-activating the educational journey of these wonderful young girls, and because I feel the organization represents the best of what America should be — welcoming people and their cultures here to our country and then positioning them for long-term success in the educational system,” he said.

Lowance, who has been quietly attending career events in the lead-up to his start date at UVA, said he’s already started to connect with students.

“We’re really trying to facilitate employers being able to access our students and have an authentic conversation about what is the right fit and the right career path for them,” he said. “We want to continue to do that in a way that creates access to opportunity for our students.”

Now that Lowance in back in Charlottesville, he’s able to revisit some of his favorite local restaurants and golf spots from the past, and try out new ones.

“Everybody who graduates from here has the fantasy of moving back to Charlottesville,” he said. “I’m getting to live the fantasy. But the best part of it is that one has the privilege of doing a challenging job in a wonderful place with a great culture.”

Founded in 1819, the University of Virginia School of Law is the second-oldest continuously operating law school in the nation. Consistently ranked among the top law schools, Virginia is a world-renowned training ground for distinguished lawyers and public servants, instilling in them a commitment to leadership, integrity and community service.

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