The Benefits of a Transnational Lawyer

[Intro voiceover]: Welcome to Navigating Grad Law at WashU — your guide to admissions, academics, and more. Today, sit down with Juan Del Valle, Jim Reeves, and Mike Koby as they chat about the benefits of becoming a transnational lawyer.

Juan Del Valle: Well, hello, everybody. My name is Juan Del Valle. I am the Director of International Programs and a lecturer in the law school for a little bit more than seven years. I had the opportunity of being a student here in our LLM for International Attorneys program back in 2009, graduated in 2010. I came originally from Colombia, where I was an attorney, and I decided to pursue my master’s degree in law here to learn more about the common law system, mostly about the U.S. legal system, and hopefully open some professional doors to work in international organizations and in U.S. law firms.

Mike Koby: I’m Mike Koby, and I’m the Associate Dean for International and Graduate Programs, as well as a professor of practice. I joined the faculty at Washington University in 2001, and for most of my career here, I’ve been teaching in the JD program. In 2013, though, I was appointed Associate Dean for International Programs, and that includes anything that is a non-JD degree — our LLM, Master of Legal Studies, our JSD doctoral program, as well as our specialized LLM programs.

Jim Reeves: Hi, I’m Jim Reeves. I’m a lecturer in law at Washington University School of Law. I’ve been teaching at Washington University since 2005. Before I came to Washington University, I taught at another university’s law school, and prior to that, I was a litigation attorney for 20 years.

Like a lot of our faculty in the NDR program — the Negotiation and Dispute Resolution program — we bring a lot of practice and experience to the classroom, as well as theory. Looking forward to talking with all of you about our wonderful programs.

Jim Reeves: Well, welcome back, everybody. I’m Jim Reeves, a lecturer at Washington University, and I work in the graduate and international programs. I’m here with Professor Juan Del Valle and Dean Mike Koby, and we’re talking about the advantages of an LLM degree, and transnational lawyering creating a lot of opportunities and broadening one’s experience in the practice of law.

Dean Koby, talk a little bit about your perspective on transnational lawyering and the relationship with — and the advantages of — an LLM degree.

Mike Koby: Well, I can say, over the decades I’ve been doing this, I’ve been shocked on many occasions about how valuable an LLM degree can be. I’ve had so many students talk to me about their careers and what they’re doing, and how the idea of knowing and being conversant in two legal systems has been very powerful.

You think about globalization and just how global everything is. The idea that a lawyer can come alongside a corporation and bridge the gap between the two — and understand the basic tenets of both legal systems — is extremely valuable.

I know we have a lawyer here from Colombia, Professor Del Valle. What are your thoughts on that?

Juan Del Valle: Well, thank you so much, Dean Koby. As you said, I’m originally from Colombia, so I was trained in the civil law system — basically a codified, written-law-based system. Then I had the opportunity of coming here to WashU to study my LLM in U.S. law. So I had the opportunity of learning about the common law system and specifically about the U.S. legal system.

After having that combined knowledge, I saw how the doors started opening for me — for roles that would require me to have that expanded legal knowledge, where businesses or organizations had not only deals and activities within civil law countries, but also, for example, deals with the United States, or where the headquarters were located in the United States, or in the United Kingdom or Australia.

That really gave me a lot of value to help these types of organizations, by being able to legally translate different issues — kind of being able to understand, “You know what? This legal system would approach this issue this way, and this other legal system would approach this issue this way.” So, of course, that’s going to be super beneficial for these types of transnational organizations that want to try to protect themselves, or avoid having multiple legal advisors with diverse or different knowledge.

It just makes it easier administratively for an organization to have one person, or a team of people, that can really understand these different legal issues.

Mike Koby: Excellent. When you think about the advantages, or why an LLM degree makes sense — I’ve found that different students or different graduates, alums, will have different reasons.

One student from Brazil just recently talked about how, because she’s developed such a strong vocabulary — her legal English, her English in general, is so much stronger — she is often called upon to lead meetings that involve people from different countries, where English is a common language.

But I think of another student I talked to not long ago from Italy. In fact, I met him for lunch in Milan, and he was one of my students actually, in a class that I taught several years ago. He was telling me about his business — he represents a window manufacturer. He was talking about his frustration about how, when he works with a company that is exporting windows to the United States and there’s a problem with the contract, there’s some clause about delivery of goods and how that works — he was saying how frustrating it is that in New York, the law might be one thing.

And then it was his experience that New York law was different. And then he had the same situation in Miami, Florida, and state law differed on that. He was just talking about the complexities of the U.S. legal system and how being able to know what questions to ask, and understanding how a U.S. lawyer thinks, how contracts are created — there are big differences between the way a contract is drafted in the United States versus Italy, for example. So just having basic knowledge of that is, I think, a powerful tool in a lawyer’s toolbox. That was just an example of a recent interaction with a student.

Juan Del Valle: Yeah, I totally agree. I actually remember that one of the things I focused on when I was an LLM student was drafting contracts. Since I was very corporate-oriented, I knew that if I really wanted to work either in the United States or in organizations where U.S. law was going to be a big issue, I needed to learn how to draft commercial agreements according to U.S. practices.

That was something I really focused on. I enjoyed it. I can attest to those practical differences between legal systems, but it’s definitely beneficial to try to seek an LLM program that will allow you to not only acquire theory, but also have opportunities to learn a little bit about practical tools.

Mike Koby: One other thing we shouldn’t fail to mention is that an LLM graduate can take the bar to practice law in the United States. Most of our students who take the bar will take the New York bar, but you can take the California bar, the Washington bar — there are several bars in the United States where you can actually take an exam and become a lawyer in that state.

That credential, with the LLM, has proven extremely powerful for our graduates to be able to say, “I’m licensed to practice law in New York, and I’m a licensed attorney in Mexico” — or Brazil, or wherever. I think it gives the lawyer a lot of credibility — credibility that’s unusual and distinct from most of his or her colleagues.

Juan Del Valle: Totally agreed. A couple of months ago I was talking with a partner from a very large multinational law firm that has a presence in Colombia. He was telling me how most of the partners and the highest-ranked associates within the law firm — even though they work in different countries in Latin America — hold a bar license in the United States.

I think the explanation is not only because of the natural business that we have within the Americas in that case, but also because legal systems evolve. A lot of countries with civil law systems — and I’m talking about Latin America specifically, but I could include other civil law countries — are evolving by borrowing tools from the common law system to make their judicial systems work faster.

So from systems that were purely written — where, if you were going to file a lawsuit in court, you would just write down the lawsuit and file it in a window, and then file your evidence, and then the other party would do the same, and then you’d get a decision without even seeing the judge ever — now these systems are evolving toward orality, meaning that there are more adversarial elements, even though it is a civil law system.

Attorneys now are having more contact with the other parties — with the counterparties — and with the judge. So being able to know about the U.S. legal system will definitely be beneficial, even though you’re thinking about practicing in a civil law country.

Jim Reeves: You know, an area in which I teach is NDR — Negotiation and Dispute Resolution. Because of the globalization of our economic and legal systems, there are international arbitration forums and international mediation forums. Students, lawyers, need to understand how those organizations operate, how these processes operate, so that they’re better able to counsel their clients.

Do we go to arbitration? Do we not go to arbitration? Should we include an arbitration clause in the contract? Should we not? Whose country is the arbitration in? What law is going to apply to the contract? All the multiple issues involving international law come into play.

Having the exposure through an LLM degree really opens up those doors, and opens up the soon-to-be attorney’s eyes. Another even more broad issue is cultural competency — the ability to work with people from around the world. Dean Koby, do you have any thoughts about that?

Mike Koby: Absolutely. In fact, I think it’s one of those things that you don’t think about when you come to study at a university. You think about the classroom, taking exams, learning the black-letter law, learning about the legal system. But there’s something that is, I think, very valuable, and that is the ability to work with people from different cultures and from different countries — just developing an ability to communicate with somebody from Saudi Arabia and someone from Colombia.

There are cultural differences, and being able to spend a whole year working with people from around the world… in fact, this year we have 24 countries represented, I believe. So you’re around people from across the globe. It’s something you can’t measure. It’s not like you’re taking an exam, where you say, “All right, I’m culturally competent.” But developing those skills over the year, I think, is something that is invaluable.

Jim Reeves: Well — Juan, Mike — thank you very much for taking some time to talk about transnational lawyering and our LLM program.

Juan Del Valle: Thank you.

Mike Koby: Thank you.