Voice of Experience: Lucy Reed, Global Co-Head of International Arbitration Group, Freshfields

By Pamela Weinsaft (New York City)

“It is not the amount of money that affects how hard I work. I worked as hard when I was a GS-7 law clerk as I do now as a highly paid law firm partner. The most important thing for me is that I have a varied practice and a varied career. I’m always looking for new challenges, which is why I like international arbitration— each case involves a different sector, different expert, different issues,” said Lucy Reed, the global co-head of the International Arbitration Group at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP.

Reed started her career clerking for a federal trial judge in D.C. who had a number of international cases, including a 9-month criminal trial of the first defendants accused of the assassination of former Ambassador Orlando Letelier ordered by Augusto Pinochet. She then went into a D.C. law firm that had arbitration cases before the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal set up in The Hague after the Iranian Revolution.

The Thrill of International Arbitration

When her firm was closing, Reed jumped at the invitation to continue arbitration and other international work at the State Department’s Office of the Legal Adviser. “I thought I would stay for two years; I stayed for seven. One of my positions was to be the Legal Counselor at the Embassy in The Hague and the U.S. Agent to the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal (like the U.S. Attorney). A lot of people wondered why the State Department would send a woman to be the lead counterpart to the Islamic Republic of Iran. Luckily, it didn’t even occur to my seniors at the Department of State at the time not to send me because I was a woman; they sent me because I was qualified. I thank the State Department and them for that,” said Reed. She credits her immersion in arbitrations at the Hague Tribunal—literally hundreds—with much of her success today.

But it was also while at the State Department that Reed learned that things aren’t always based on merit when she was, in her estimation, once unfairly evaluated by a supervisor. “I found that there was no way to fix that. And it was a good lesson for me to have it hit home that things aren’t always fair. I’ve had a pretty privileged life. I work hard but I’ve had a lot of good luck and people who’ve supported me through thick and thin. That experience gave me a more realistic view of how to fight in a system and not take things for granted.” And, she added, “I try to treat other people really fairly as a result. I am particularly alert to women being given the short end of the stick and not having tools to fight back with.”

Returning to Private Practice in the U.S.

She left the State Department and moved to New York with her journalist husband, who was the Deputy Managing Editor and Chief of Foreign Correspondents at Newsweek International. Largely because she had experience in both private and public international law, Reed was asked to be the first general counsel of a new international organization, the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO), which was set up in the wake of President Clinton’s 1994 Agreed Framework with North Korea to build proliferation-resistant nuclear power plants in exchange for the North’s nuclear weapons program. She explained, “I was in North Korea a lot negotiating with the North Koreans for KEDO on these big energy projects, diplomatic privileges and immunities, regulatory infrastructure – all sorts of extremely interesting things. That was—in a certain way—a lot of fun.”

After some time there, Reed joined the prestigious international law firm Freshfields, which was expanding in the U.S. “And even though I had said that I didn’t want to go back to the private practice of law, I couldn’t turn down an invitation to join their international arbitration group, which at that time was and still is the best in the world.” She adds, “As with my other positions, I’ve never looked back.”

Around the same time, in 1999, she also took on the role of co-director of the special Claims Resolution Tribunal (CRT) that was set up to return dormant Swiss bank accounts to Holocaust survivors and their heirs. “I got involved in it because, one day at KEDO, my boss, Ambassador Stephen Bosworth, mentioned that he was having lunch with Paul Volcker [who spearheaded the efforts to get the Swiss banks to conduct audits and fund the CRT]. I ran down my qualifications, including that I had done claims for the State Department vis-à-vis Iran and written my thesis at Brown University on Holocaust literature. I then told Steve to tell Mr. Volcker I was willing to help if needed.” She was taken up on her offer.

The Challenge of Work-Life Balance

The job ended up requiring Reed to travel to Zurich every other week for several months, a schedule which proved challenging to her and her family. “My daughter, who was then 11 or 12, had read The Diary of Anne Frank and she understood that it was an unusually important thing to do (we talked about it a lot) but, for my son, who was three years younger, every other week at home didn’t quite do it. The CRT was the hardest period in my life in terms of work-life balance.”

Reed added that, despite work demands, she has always put her family first. One reason is that she has been the victim of two violent crimes—one involving her directly and one in which her daughter, who was an infant at the time, was kidnapped at knifepoint (by the girlfriend of a drug dealer in D.C.) and so she recognizes the precarious nature of life. “I don’t talk about it much, but not a day goes by that I don’t think that the day is a bonus day and remind myself not to get too worried about the little stuff,” explained Reed.

Still, that didn’t mean that balancing work-life was easy. “When my son and daughter would complain about my work, say that they wished I could pick them up at school or something similar, I’d tell them that I would love to but had to work. I always, always told them I work because I really like my work and I’m really good at my work. And I would tell them I loved them more of course. I made it a point never to say that I regretted work, because my mother so often regretted not working.” Having said that, she adds: “I was lucky not to have children with special needs or major work-family conflicts, I managed to miss only 1 birthday in 39 child-years. And we were protective of family dinners.”

Reed has built the U.S. Freshfields’ arbitration department from scratch, growing it—she is quick to say, with the support of her colleagues in other offices—from just her to some 25 lawyers. She is extremely appreciative and proud of her team, which always includes many women. In addition to client work, Reed serves as the president of the American Society of International Law and chairman of the Institute for Transnational Arbitration.

Barriers to Women in Law Firms

Concerning barriers to success for women in law firms, Reed points to the challenges posed by the business model of the big law firm, saying that far too often women are tracked into non-equity roles because of the time demands of full equity partner roles. “There are three full time components to a law firm lawyer’s life: your real work, your family or other outside life, and (unlike in government) all those extra things that go with being a law firm lawyer, like marketing, publishing, going to conferences, keeping up with your practice area and being on boards. It is a very tough road for women and men in their late 20s and 30s who want to have an interesting practice and fulfill all the requirements of law firms and law firm clients. And it is very hard to change that. It is a service industry and, at the Freshfields level and with the demands our clients have around the world, one really has to be available at all times—a lot of hours. I don’t have a magic wand or a crystal ball so I can’t see how law firms will adjust this structure, especially in this economic downturn. The trick is to lengthen out the development path for the lawyers in their 20s and 30s who want more time with their families and then get them back full-time with their impressive brains and skills.” Reed emphasizes that Freshfields devotes a lot of attention and time to this challenge, at all levels, although “of course, we can do more.”

She sees other challenges inherent in the law firm system as it currently exists. “I’m very vocal about this: associates in big firms are paid too much money. The salary increases in the ’80s and ’90s and early 2000s hurt the development of lawyers because, due to what we pay the associates and—not unrelated—what many have to pay back in school loans, they have to specialize from day one—not just in finance, for example, but in structured finance. When I was a young lawyer in D.C., we all had to do a year of administrative law, a year of litigation, and a year of corporate law, to learn the profession. Now, the early years can narrow, instead of broaden, professional education.” But she is hopeful: “Maybe this economic crisis will help us get back to the prior model.”

Advice to Women in Law

Reed advises young women entering the field of international arbitration to keep their eyes open for unusual opportunities that their generation may have to practice law, as hers did with the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal and CRT. “Law firms are just one option—there are so many other things to do with our skills as lawyers. Be open to opportunities to serve and don’t get used to making a lot of money. And avoid golden handcuffs—pay off the loans as soon as possible.”

“Also, know that no one is going to make it easy for you to balance your personal life, family or otherwise, with your work. Do not expect a law firm to manage that for you— you will have to find your own way.” She added, “This comes as a shock to a lot of new lawyers, who have had a pretty easy time balancing things in college and law school.”

Her advice to women already moving along in the field is to “stick it out unless you are miserable.” She added, “Accept that there are many days that your life will be tough—so long as 7 or 8 days out of 10 are good, that’s very good. I would say it is 9.5 out of 10 days at Freshfields. But truth be told, there were some days in my career, believe me, where it was boring or stressful and I wanted to up and move to Vermont. But I have always had to work, financially, and so I had no choice but to stick it out over the tough periods and I feel grateful now.”

Reed added, “A rule in horseback riding is: ‘look where you want to go.’ I think that is a great rule for life in general as well!”