In the world of corporate and finance law, Rasul Raheem is someone you don’t want to mess with.
The 1984 alumnus of Wayne State University Law School has twice (2013 and 2014) been named First Chair Top Outstanding Assistant General Counsel for his work as senior vice president and assistant general counsel with Bank of America Corp.
And he has a fourth-degree black belt in Isshinryu karate.
He returned to Wayne Law, earning his master of laws degree in corporate and finance law in 2003.
“Wayne Law was empowering for me,” Raheem said. “I have good memories from law school – friendships, first-year classes and study groups, and meeting my wife, a law student at another school out of state, by pure chance. Twenty years later in getting my LL.M., I found that Wayne Law is one of the few, if not the only, programs in the state with a serious corporate finance curriculum and faculty.”
He became fascinated with corporate finance law in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when scandals involving Enron, WorldCom, hedge funds and the like were hot topics.
“I had just gone through a fourth of what would be six corporate legal department downsizings and felt a need to improve myself in order to make it to the next level,” Raheem said. “I found that the art of the deal and the project valuation analysis it involved complemented my already existing practice in banking. It is important that we as lawyers continue to gain knowledge and skills to bring value to the relationship. I would say that most people don’t realize that, unfortunately, many of our math Ph.D. graduates are working in financial markets, not in the sciences and research field.”
Raheem was born in Philadelphia and raised in Ann Arbor. He was a star athlete at Ann Arbor Pioneer High School, playing football, basketball, baseball and running track and field. He graduated from the University of Michigan, where he was elected to student government, with a bachelor’s degree in general studies; studied business administration at LaSalle University in Philadelphia; and then turned to Wayne Law, where he worked as a research assistant for Distinguished Professor John Dolan.
After graduation, Raheem, who lives in Southfield, worked for a small law firm, Kirk, McCargo, & Arbulu, in Detroit. In 1988, he began his career in banking law as vice president and senior counsel with Michigan National Corp. From 2001 to 2007, he worked as first vice president and senior counsel for LaSalle Bank Corp. In 2007, he joined Bank of America in his current position. He also was an adjunct professor at Western Michigan University Thomas M. Cooley Law School from 2011 to 2015, teaching a course on financial institutions and regulatory compliance.
Promoting diversity has been important to Raheem throughout his career. He’s the immediate past president of the D. Augustus Straker Bar Association. In 2013, he was a panelist at the American Bar Association’s Commission on Racial and Ethnic Diversity’s 25th anniversary of the Minority Counsel Program. Last year, Raheem was recognized as a Man of Excellence by the Michigan Chronicle. The award celebrates African-American men in southeast Michigan who inspire others through their vision, leadership, achievement and community service.
Raheem is modest about his accomplishments.
“I just continue to work hard every day to add value to the enterprise,” he said. “When you have been practicing law long enough and endeavor to help others, you eventually get recognized for doing your job.”
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