#146: Christopher Stephens - World Bank General Counsel

Jonah Perlin [00:00:00]:
Welcome to How I Lawyer, a podcast where I talk to attorneys from throughout the profession about what they do, why they do it, and how they do it well. I'm your host, Jonah Perlin, a law professor in Washington DC. This episode is sponsored, edited, and engineered by my friends at LawPods. LawPods is a professional podcast production company focused solely on attorney podcasting. I absolutely love working with them. And if you're considering becoming a legal podcaster or just wanna learn more, check them out at lawpods.com. And now let's get started.

Christopher Stephens [00:00:34]:
Hello, and welcome back. In today's episode, I'm excited to speak with Chris Stephens, who's the senior vice president and general counsel of the World Bank Group, a role he has held since 2022. Before that, mister Stephens served as the general counsel of the International Finance Corporation, which is the private sector arm of the World Bank Group. And before that, he was general counsel of the Asian Development Bank. And before that, managing partner for Asia and a member of the management committee of The US law firm, Orec, Harrington and Sutcliffe, where he was based in Hong Kong. Mister Stephens is a graduate of Colgate University, go Raiders, and New York Law School. And I'm so glad to have him on, especially as I was telling Chris before the interview as a World Bank kid. It's a real highlight to have him be on the podcast.

Christopher Stephens [00:01:17]:
So thank you for being here, Chris.

Chris Stevens [00:01:18]:
Hi, Jonah. Thanks for having me. It's a great podcast, and it's an honor to be on.

Christopher Stephens [00:01:23]:
That's very kind. Well, look. I always like to get started. I like to think that lawyers are superheroes, but for those that don't think lawyers are superheroes, I still think we have origin stories. So I would love to hear a little bit about your decision to become a lawyer. And when you were in law school or soon thereafter, what kind of lawyer you thought you'd be?

Chris Stevens [00:01:38]:
Well, I guess when I look at the question of what made me decide to become a lawyer, I think in short, it was advanced microeconomics. I was an economics major, and I wanted to do something that gave me new and different clients and different challenges and different problems. I was fearful of being in a company where I would be working with the same people in the same sector and clients, year after year. And I thought business management consultants like McKinsey or others got different clients and different challenges, and I love business, and I sought the variation. But the actual pathway towards, business consultancy plus the actual job sent me in a different direction. I thought a lawyer would also get to advise different clients with different problems, but could leave the algebra and the capitalist to someone else. And so I determined about my junior year in college too that I'd go to law school.

Christopher Stephens [00:02:29]:
I love that. And I'm sure my father, who's an economist by training, if he's listening, would be very excited by that very particular answer. But what's also interesting about the answer is I think one of the challenges, especially for people coming out of undergrad today, is deciding not just I wanna be a lawyer, but what I want my day to look like. And it sounds like you sort of thought a little bit about that. I wanna do business, but I wanna do it in a particular way. Is that accurate?

Chris Stevens [00:02:56]:
I think so. I didn't really have much of an understanding of what the day would look like and didn't have that much of a granular attention to it, but I had an affinity for business. I read business books and enjoyed them and thought that that would be something to my liking. And so while most people in the younger years have a vision of a lawyer as a litigator appearing in court and defending or prosecuting one or another issue, I very much wanted to get into corporate law and corporate finance to the McKinsey consultancy idea.

Christopher Stephens [00:03:26]:
Right. Exactly. Exactly. It's also a good reminder that I try to tell my students all the time that if it's the kind of thing that you read books about in your spare time, that's a good signal that maybe you could try to find a professional path to it. So I love that. So after law school, you worked in law firms in New York for more than a decade. Talk to me a little bit about what you did early in your career.

Chris Stevens [00:03:46]:
Yeah. My dad had a 15 person law firm up in White Plains, New York. And so my plan was to work in big law in New York City for a couple of years, maybe two years, get some rigorous training, get some big law experience, and then join my dad and his firm. The theory was that I couldn't go the other way. If you don't start in big law right out of school, you lose that opportunity. You can't start at a small firm or in the public sector and easily move to big law. So after I graduated, law school, I started at Breed, Abbot and Morgan in 1984. That was one of the big and marquee old white shoes firms, and I got caught up in the whole frenzy of the work at the time.

Chris Stevens [00:04:26]:
And pretty soon, my two year plan was overtaken by inertia, and I found myself at about five or six years and then in the middle of the hunt for partnership, which is a fairly intense and grueling, pathway. But it was only another few years to go, and that's the that's the risk of these things that you're always a a few years from the next major move and and your plans are for naught and and you're caught up in a different kind of pathway. But that was the mid eighties, the decade of greed. Real Gordon Gekko stuff, if you remember. In the nineteen seventies, a lot of big companies and financial firms were amalgamated all kinds of related and unrelated businesses in different industries, and they were creating these enormous conglomerates. And that turned out to be an error of strategy. And by the early eighties when I showed up, companies were starting to spin off these unrelated businesses through leveraged buyouts, management buyouts, private equity using junk bonds, and so forth. And it was absolute deluge of transactional work all pursued with a frenzied urgency.

Chris Stevens [00:05:27]:
There were all nighters several times a month, weekends, holidays, the whole enchilada. And I was brand new to the practice of law and thought that was just the life of a lawyer in New York and I could probably do it for a few years as I planned, not only because I had other plans, but I didn't know how long you could endure that pace. And all that work would would surely create partnership opportunities. But my class was up for partnership in December 1992, and in September was, Black Wednesday. A significant market crisis, and business fell off dramatically, and the prospects for partnership were were very grim. But I snuck through and made it, notwithstanding my two year plan. I now thought I had a job, for the next thirty five years. There's lessons there too, largely unheeded that things are not always what they seem at the time for clients or for markets, or law firms that rise and fall, on market conditions.

Chris Stevens [00:06:21]:
But at least I thought I'd, secured my final career objective. Right? But the firm decided in 1993 that it needed to be bigger, and this was the dawn of the mega firm when the so called firms went from 500 to over a thousand and then up to 2,000 lawyers. And so Breed Abbott merged with Whitman and Ransom. And, it turns out for us that that merger didn't work so well. And so a group of us, about nine partners, moved to the Credera Brothers law firm. And that was a big deal back then because partners didn't move very often, and certainly not in those groups. But that was also the era of, Stephen Brill. Steve Brill, as you may remember, launched the American Lawyer magazine in the early nineties and started to publish law firm financial results, including most impactfully profits per partner.

Chris Stevens [00:07:10]:
And, so until then, partners didn't move in part because of inertia and in part because they really didn't know precisely how well or how much better they thought they could be doing at other firms. And so in retrospect, that was really an early signal that the information previously unavailable and non transparent could, could change entire markets, especially at the dawn of the information age. So we started looking for a better platform at the time, and it was apparent that, Kudera had one of the premier international law practices in the world. It was akin to Baker and McKenzie historically and it had really a terrific, magnificent, history. Perhaps the first truly international law firm, Coudert was founded by five French brothers, which opened, with two brothers in Paris, and three brothers came to New York in 1853. So it was from its inception with those two offices a truly international law firm. It financed the Statue Of Liberty. It did one of the first securities offerings under the 1933 Securities Act.

Chris Stevens [00:08:11]:
It was the first foreign law firm in Hong Kong, Moscow, Singapore, London, and many other firsts. It also had a wonderfully, entrepreneurial culture. And even in the short time I was there, it expanded with new offices in Australia, Vietnam, Germany, and Brussels. And the Qudir people were were genuinely amazing. They were smart and friendly. They came from the very top law schools. They spoke two or three languages, and they really cultivated a reputation that enabled it to continue to recruit people like themselves over generations. But for all its wonderful culture and talents, the firm really had no idea how to run a business that they did.

Chris Stevens [00:08:49]:
And, it ran very much on the basis of the, field of dreams principle, which is if you build it, they the clients will come. And they built it, and they didn't. And many of these offices were understaffed. There wasn't a lot of strategic thinking or planning, organizing, how they might build out practices and coordinate through clients. And so that just wasn't, successful. And, alas, by 02/2005, Coudair, while being one of the, hundred highest grossing law firms, had about 35 offices around the world, most of which were staffed with one or two lawyers. And as a result of all that overhead, it was one of the lowest profits per partner. And then when Stephen Brill made that public, half of the firm thought they could do better elsewhere.

Chris Stevens [00:09:34]:
So that was, that was fairly well a, disaster. And sadly, Kudair dissolved in 02/2005. And by that time, I was the managing partner for Asia covering nine offices.

Christopher Stephens [00:09:45]:
Well, let me let me just stop you there for a second because what's really interesting because I get to do these interviews and get to do them for an audience of primarily sort of more junior lawyers and law students who sometimes think that they are going through sort of unprecedented times. If I got a nickel for every time I hear the phrase unprecedented times in law school, I'd be a rich man. I wouldn't need to do my largely unpaid side hustle podcast. But a lot of the pieces of your story are there have been echoes in history. Right? Tough economic markets, changing partnership prospects, changes in information, changes in profits per partner, increasing mobility. These are all things that we are talking about in 2025 just as much as they changed your career. And, ultimately, the crazy part about it is we can plan and plan and plan and lawyers love to be planners, but at the end of the day, the world happens to us just as much as we plan. Is that right?

Chris Stevens [00:10:43]:
Oh, absolutely. I was asked to go out to Hong Kong and, right after we got to Cougar Brothers, in large part, the firm in New York and the partners I came with had a big foreign practice, foreign investors, particularly Japanese multinationals who were coming into The United States and they bought Rockefeller Center and Pebble Beach Golf Club. And they were very active in Asia, and we had no piece of that. But Cogara had a huge network through Asia. And so I went out there in, beginning of nineteen ninety seven, and then only six months after I arrived, Thailand floated its currency, the baht, and it crashed spectacularly, setting off the Asian, currency crisis, which became the Asian financial crisis, and all foreign investment, business just came to a halt. Everything that I had planned to do, in Asia, it just stopped immediately to the day of six months after I got there. And as a matter of survival, I had to reinvent myself as a China Investment Lawyer. Qudir had a great China team, and they they remained very busy.

Chris Stevens [00:11:42]:
And ultimately, as the rest of Asia recovered, China just got stronger and busier. But in that interim, to your point, there was a, a market crash in 1999 that set the practices back. The .com bubble burst in 02/2001, setting off another huge market retrenchment. There was a financial crisis in 02/2003 and, of course, the global financial crisis in 02/2007 to 02/2009, and that was a big one affecting a wide swath of business. So at some point, you do think that the the latest crisis du jour is not unique, and they've happened before. We will survive. There will be some changes perhaps to the way we do business, but maybe they're not as dramatic and impactful overall as you may think they are. So I was giving a talk just last week, and I heard the words come out of my mouth to the effect that these are particularly challenging times.

Chris Stevens [00:12:30]:
And I wondered, has there ever been one of my predecessors or anyone that stood in this podium that their times weren't particularly challenging? So I think it's part of the job. Maybe it's what keeps it exciting, but it certainly keeps you on your toes. So to your point, though, there are crises that come and go. They all seem particularly significant and impactful at the time, but you get used to them. It gives you some comfort even when you're in the in the midst of one, it too shall pass.

Christopher Stephens [00:12:56]:
Doctor. Right. And if it doesn't give you comfort in the moment, at least it should give you comfort that other people have gone through it in the past. And those of us who have been through more of them can share some of the wisdom we've learned along the way.

Chris Stevens [00:13:08]:
And that was a particular challenge in New York because that whole nineteen eighties craze of LBOs, buyouts, and private equity, and jump bonds was driven by what was then called the investment banks. And the most senior person on a deal, a very big deal in New York, would be 29 or 34 years old. And so there was no real historic context for these young folks, and and, of course, I was a young lawyer. Every one of these bumps in the road seems catastrophic to us because of our narrow perspective. So maybe there's a a place for the old timers too.

Christopher Stephens [00:13:40]:
Amen. Amen. Love that. You mentioned that you came to Hong Kong in order to because sort of you were doing new business and then everything changed. Was that a big talk about that decision. That feels like a really large decision from someone who sort of went to law school in New York, builds their legal career in New York, and you find yourself in Hong Kong. Talk to me a little bit about sort of what that was like and and what you thought maybe in the moment and maybe what you learned from it.

Chris Stevens [00:14:06]:
Yeah. I guess the first thing is that I remember I I went to law school for three years in New York, and then I joined the New York firm for three years, and I ended up for sixteen. And then I decided I would go out to Hong Kong. And again, people don't like to move, and they don't like change. And when they did, you know, when they do finally do that, they become embedded and don't wanna change again. And so I went to Hong Kong with a two year assignment, which I thought could turn out to be three, ended up staying in Hong Kong for sixteen years and ended up in Asia for twenty four. So people, as I think, you just have to get used to adapting to new circumstances and new adventures. Everybody that I'm familiar with from different countries that has lived in different countries thinks well of the experience, think they were enriched by it personally and professionally, but it is a big move.

Chris Stevens [00:14:53]:
It's a big move personally. It's a big move. Family and professionally, I can pay a big move. And nobody would move if you ask them to go for twenty four years. So you send them for a couple of years and hope the best, but it is it it is a big change.

Christopher Stephens [00:15:07]:
And what was it like once you started you know, obviously, you were there working for an international law firm and you went to others and sort of played a management role even. What was it like working for American law firms but from Hong Kong? Tell me a little bit about that experience.

Chris Stevens [00:15:22]:
But, you know, American law's point was at the time quite different from the way the Europeans and other foreigners practice the law firms. In Mainland China, there wasn't the development really of a private sector law practice. Most lawyers, at the time either worked for budding law firms or worked for the government. And the error while the Chinese can permit foreign law firms to come in and set up licenses and give legal advice on Chinese law, as they were very practical as always and thought and and recognized, I guess, that foreign investors, with which there was an abundance, wouldn't undertake that investment risk without some comfort, as to their legal position and the enforceability of contracts and recourse and that kind of thing. And so they cleverly permitted foreign law firms like us to advise on the impact of Chinese law, which is very insightful and was enough to let us give the foreigners the advice they needed. But American lawyers at the time were very they were expected to be very solution oriented and to be capable of rendering advice throughout the, range of clients' activities and risks and solutions, where some of the other lawyers from civil law jurisdictions or elsewhere in Asia were more rigidly and almost a regulatory mindset. They were gonna clear the legality of what they were asked to do or recognize legal risks to advise on that. And I think, at least initially, clients really saw a premium that particularly in the developing markets throughout Southeast Asia.

Christopher Stephens [00:16:51]:
And when you sort of when you had that experience and got the opportunity to sort of be the American on the ground in those countries, was it challenging to sort of translate not the language, but the legal culture, the laws themselves, the business themselves. How did you sort of negotiate that again coming from from the New York mindset?

Chris Stevens [00:17:15]:
Yeah. The foreign law the foreign clients were were used to dealing with law firms in which they had a relationship and a comfort and were at a very clear expectation of the kinds of legal services that they expected. And so they were very happy to work with, American law firms. And, of course, we had some offices in Europe that were also feeding us business. And so if we were well coordinated, they could see us in Asia as an extension of that quality of service representation, while at the same time on the ground, we were trying to cultivate our own clients. But faced by the competition of the emergence of other firms that were, either domestic firms were were starting to come up, and they were very cost competitive. And then the sophistication of, foreign clients who started to staff up with local, staff and and saw that, maybe the Americans weren't the only gang in town and so quickly put for chance. And, Magic Circle was showing up in from The United States, White And Case, and others moved up.

Chris Stevens [00:18:13]:
So the competition really did follow a market opportunity, and we had to change the way we were doing things very quickly.

Christopher Stephens [00:18:19]:
That makes sense. And do you think that that world has changed? I mean, you were in it, as you said, for twenty four years. Obviously, it changed during that time. Is there still a place for sort of the American lawyer moving abroad and becoming a part of an international law firm?

Chris Stevens [00:18:36]:
There may be, but less and less so. And I think any well staffed law office in Asia, as in Europe, needs to be, localized to an extent. They need to know the business culture and the languages and the local law in a way that is very hard for foreign lawyers to, to be able to navigate. So it's a bit of a mix on the ground, but clearly evolving towards more of a localized, practice and familiarity. Plus, it's hard to maintain that the global consistency on staffing and career progression when you're dealing with such dramatically different markets.

Christopher Stephens [00:19:08]:
And eventually, during your time, you decide to transition to the Asian Development Bank, which is more of a public sector job than the private sector jobs you had found yourself in. Talk to me a little bit about that transition

Jonah Perlin [00:19:19]:
and how that came about.

Chris Stevens [00:19:21]:
Well, again, I think this was another two year plan. I've talked about going to New York for two years or and then, and then working in big law for two years or going to Asia for two years. So the lesson there is I'm a very crappy, planner. And it was the same with the Asian Development Bank or ADB. I went there. Well, I thought I would go for two or three years and then go back to private law practice. But it was an amazingly fascinating line of work that they were doing. Two big transitions, though.

Chris Stevens [00:19:48]:
One was, moving into it from a large law firm to a public institution to an in house position is a big change. And the second big change is the move from private sector to public sector and and the impact of that. Moving from a law firm to an in house position was something that I was apprehensive about because I thought as I had when I came out of law school that working in an in house position would give me this sameness over time of the same business and the same people and the same problems. But I think the biggest change that comes with which is essentially a company for which the business is the law, to a bank for which the business is financial products and services, not the law, And at the Asian Development Bank or any bank, the legal function is the support function with the responsibility to provide legal advice and solutions to internal clients and to ensure that that advice is technically excellent and practically or commercially useful and is provided on a timely manner and so forth. But you're there to identify and avoid or mitigate risk and to anticipate issues that resolve them or provide solutions where they arise. So you're not directly responsible for the management of the bank or its financial results, but you are a key part of the management team that does all. So it's a very, very different role than the law of the partner or law firm. But the in house role also gives you an active role at every phase of the business and the lifespan of the project, for example, that you don't get at a law firm.

Chris Stevens [00:21:17]:
When I was in a law firm, clients will be working on a, project, for example, for sometimes a couple of years before they call their outside lawyer and ask for their to help them negotiate the final, loan or financing or m and a. But for the bank, the lawyer is involved from the point of a loan or an investment is actually conceived, designed, negotiated, closed, and then remains involved when that transaction goes over to portfolio manager for monitoring, compliance, and then extending from there to the time if necessary when there's a default or restructuring enforcement. The in house function also interestingly covers the bank's bond offerings and management of capital adequacy, administration, governance, including human resources, matters of staff conduct, the pension plan administration and investment, litigation, procurement, ethics, anti corruption, managing field offices. We've got over a hundred offices here at the World Bank and and 35,000 employees. So you know, all of these other things is an enormous part of the job of which outside lawyers have very little insight. And at institutions like this, Deloitte also advised a resident board of directors. And then there's the difference between the in house lawyer generally and the role of the general counsel, specifically. The general counsel is part of the senior management team and advises the board.

Chris Stevens [00:22:46]:
We at the World Bank have a resident board, which means instead of convening them every quarter, they come to work every day. And they're here, and and they engage us very regularly on a whole range of non legal issues like strategy and policies to which lawyers and the general counsel can contribute by virtue of that experience in that judgment, even aside from the law precisely because of that enormous breadth of experience that lawyers acquire by virtue of having all those roles in the organization and its business. So I don't think there's another department in these institutions or even a commercial enterprise whose role spans that full art of our activities and and lessons. The second biggest change, I think, in the move from the law firm to the private sector is the, the different objectives in in the public sector. The public sector is a very different place. It's a very different mindset. At the World Bank, we have a mission. Everybody's got a mission.

Chris Stevens [00:23:43]:
Our mission is to eliminate poverty for a livable planet, meaning our objective is to help developing countries create jobs, to eliminate poverty, and create a society and an economy that's conducive to economic growth and jobs creation, and so that they can do that sustainably going forward and effectively liberate themselves from, foreign assistance. And there are a lot of facets to that, including financing and investing and, and providing, knowledge and products for sectors in developing countries, like agriculture, infrastructure, energy, transportation, education, health care, and the other fundamentals of a strong economy. So the business of a multilateral development bank like ABB, like the World Bank, is not profit oriented. It's outcomes results for you. And the workplace then is more broadly collaborative. It can be overly so, not quite as bureaucratic as the government, but but certainly we have many of the hallmarks of the bureaucracy. But the work here is is macro in its objectives and more so than a commercial bank where the objective in a commercial bank loan, is to lend money and to be repaid with interest. In a commercial bank, the bank would focus on the viability of a borrower or the borrower's project because the payment and the repayment depend on that viability.

Chris Stevens [00:25:10]:
Here at the World Bank, we're financing, for example, a transportation project like a road, not as a means of collateral security to ensure the loan repay, but to end up with a rope that enables the movement of goods and services and connects raw materials to manufacturers and enhances supply chain, moves finished product to new markets and ports to expand businesses, thereby creating those new markets and expanding businesses and feeding job creation. So this approach to financing and clients is enormously complicated, as you can imagine, and much broader and more resource intensive than in, commercial banking. And it requires a whole multiplicity of inputs from government policy makers, landings to sector specialists, regional experts, economists, engineers, environmental and social safeguard specialists, and, of course,

Christopher Stephens [00:26:03]:
lawyers. And to take a step back on the lawyers, I mean, it's also it's almost remarkable to hear about all the legal functions, right, or touch points for the legal profession in the places you've been working, whether it be the Asian Development Bank, the IFC or now the World Bank. I guess my question would be, what are the skills that are sort of cross cutting that make lawyers effective at these tasks? And sort of more powerfully or more importantly for many of my audience members, how are people supposed to get those skills? Because ultimately, it sounds like a lot of the technical pieces can be learned on the job, but you need sort of certain interest and skills to get you started. So I guess I'd be curious about your take on that. Yeah.

Chris Stevens [00:26:45]:
I think that's a great question because students also wanna know how they can compare, and you don't wanna land in a job and have big gaps in your skills or your knowledge base because with the work schedule, it's very hard to catch up. But there is an enormous amount that's only laggable on the job. But for students, I always recommend taking the classes in areas of importance that are difficult to take and to learn after law school. The ones that most people avoid like tax, environmental law, accounting, business managed, international law. These sorts of classes that may not be expected to be directly relevant to the area that a student is pursuing, but in any case, will strengthen your ability to navigate those issues no matter what field the student, chooses. But most importantly, I think I would recommend the cultivation of a desire or a habit or discipline, really, to actively learn by pursuing knowledge and understanding and to constantly cultivate a solutions oriented approach to problem solving. But the more that any lawyer understands or knows about the business where they work, the better off they'll be, whether it's insurance or sales or manufacturing, public service, public sector. I think the more they know about the business, the more they'll be able to contribute to, its strategy, growth, and problem solving.

Christopher Stephens [00:28:06]:
So, obviously, you're at the very top of your the legal function of your organization, and that means both hiring people and guiding junior lawyers. And I guess my question there is not just the skills like we just talked about, but how do people develop a career? How do people get that first job? And then how do they succeed once they get there?

Chris Stevens [00:28:24]:
For a lot of us, it it so called multilateral development banks, like the Asian Development Bank, like the African Development Bank, Inter American Development Bank, World Bank. There's, 10 or 12 of these. We generally don't hire right out of law school. We let, law firms do the initial training. They're better at it than we are, and it's enormously resource intensive and does create in the lawyers the skills that we're looking for, whether it's in project finance or just learning how to be a lawyer. And we also hire lawyers out of other public sector experiences. So we look for a a common thread of experience and interest and drive. In some cases, language skills are useful, but, fortunately, we work in English, so that's not a disadvantage to many who don't have language skills.

Chris Stevens [00:29:13]:
So we're looking really for evidence that someone has a genuine genuinely has sufficient experience that when they say they wanna enter the development realm, there's evidence of that.

Christopher Stephens [00:29:24]:
And do you think in your own experience, having taken that international turn and spending some time abroad, was that helpful? And is that something that you think is still helpful?

Chris Stevens [00:29:33]:
I think it's helpful. It's not only helpful, I think, to me, but we require it now for people who are want to move up the ladder internally at the world back to a managerial level. We require that they have to do one stint in a field office Uh-huh. Because it does give them, an extent a perspective on the, the needs of the client. We're trying to be increasingly client responsive. We need to understand, again, the client's objectives. We finance international development and whether, as I said, it's transportation, energy, agriculture, health care. But a development strategy is the country's strategy, not ours.

Chris Stevens [00:30:12]:
And we try to develop a country partnership plan for every country, and then we pursue it. So it's very much of a collaboration with the country identifying their own development priorities, and there's no substitute for being right out there in the thick of it. And so even if after some years people come back to headquarters, they have a a much more deeper understanding of how the business is derived and what clients are looking for.

Christopher Stephens [00:30:38]:
And as general counsel, I imagine that there are a lot of skills that are not sort of entirely legal that are part of your job, and I imagine that may be true for your lawyers, who work for you as well. Talk to me a little bit about that balance. And you talked a little bit about it in the in house context, but specifically to sort of your role as general counsel of both doing legal work and sort of doing work that is good for lawyers, but not traditionally legal perhaps.

Chris Stevens [00:31:04]:
Well, I think being in the legal function gives you that arc of exposure across the the operations of the institution. And so if we have an experience in Uganda in a particular project when a similar project arises some months later in Indonesia. It's the lawyer who can connect the dots and say, we don't miss. Here's one way in which we resolved it in Uganda. And that experience, even if it's outside the legal context, enables us to be familiar with it and to cultivate, if not expertise, at least deep experiences, whether it's, any other policy compliance, civil unrest in a particular country, debt sustainability, which is a a restriction or incumbent on borrowing, the environmental problem that comes up or a social issue. So it it does give us that ability to be able to weigh in. And one useful way of thinking of it may be that as to legal matters of policy compliance and the law, we have essentially a clearance function. If we say there's a problem and you have to do it another way, hopefully, we have a solution.

Chris Stevens [00:32:09]:
You pretty much have to follow that advice. If we say that there are signs of debt sustainability or there's other issues on social, It's not in the immediate wheelhouse. It's valuable advice, but it's not necessarily a clearance function or something you have to get approval for. So there's a subtle distinction. And we also have to be sensitive to client expectations. Some clients don't expect their council to wage on all these different issues. That's the same as in the private sector. We don't come across that too often, but there can be a certain client that wants you to stay in your lane.

Chris Stevens [00:32:42]:
So we have to, you know, be mindful of of adjusting our services to fit the client's needs.

Christopher Stephens [00:32:48]:
And it's funny you say that because one of the things that you were sort of discussing is what I often hear from the both in house counsel and outside counsel, which is the challenge of the lawyer being the no player as opposed to the let's find a way to do this. How has that played out sort of in your current role or in your roles working in international development?

Chris Stevens [00:33:07]:
Well, not just in international development, but certainly here. One of the best things lawyers can do when they come out of school, and I think they've got the start of it, who is to be to approach problems with the solution oriented mindset. And if you have greater experiences, it enables you to come up with more and different solutions and options for clients. But to try to eradicate that regulatory mindset, you're not a regulator. And when you come about things or ingrain the perception in clients that you're have sort of a regular or compliance function, they avoid you. That's just human nature. Right? They'll avoid you and they'll bring you in at the last minute, which makes your job infinitely more difficult and perpetuates their perception that you're only coming into the project or the issue in order to put the brakes on something they're trying to do. So that's not a it it's not a virtuous cycle for sure.

Chris Stevens [00:33:56]:
But the more experience you can cultivate, the greater the acquisition of knowledge and understanding, and then you'll be able to come much more smoothly to a solution oriented approach to, problems or even anticipating problems before they arrive and resolving them before even the client's aware of them.

Christopher Stephens [00:34:13]:
And is there a skill that you're sort of seeing you know, we talked earlier in the podcast about how everything stays the same or at least it maybe it rhymes. Is there any particular skill that you see junior lawyers sort of lacking today that you wish junior lawyers were a little stronger at?

Chris Stevens [00:34:30]:
You know, without doubt, critical thinking. Young lawyers are exposed to it almost literally from their first day at law school. In my case, I remember reading a case in my first year of law school. It was a majority opinion from the US Supreme Court, and I think it was in a Schwartz case. And I read the majority opinion above. This is so logical, analytical, and beautifully written as they are, And it's so clearly correct, and it's a wonder how this case even reached the Supreme Court. Then I turned the page and read the the dissent. And I thought, wait a minute.

Chris Stevens [00:35:02]:
This is so clearly, logically, correct. This view must be the correct one. And it's encouraging me that that was the point that the professor was able to convey to us, that don't take the face value without some degree of skepticism on either side of the two sided yard too quickly. You're without some degree of critical thinking. And I think that's the real gift and the skill required in law school, not the diploma which gives you a license to, work for somebody, but the ability to question or to probe and to think with agility and analytically and somewhat skeptically, but not to blindly or lazily accept a view or a conclusion or opinion solely because it comes from a source that you think is reliable or a side that puts you one of mine.

Christopher Stephens [00:35:48]:
And do you think there's a way to sort of cultivate that? Is are there any sort of techniques that you'd recommend someone who says, you know, I wanna be better at this. I wanna engage in this. I wanna make this a part of my legal practice. Any thoughts on how to sort of exercise that muscle, for lack of a better word?

Chris Stevens [00:36:04]:
I think that's what it is. I think there's a discipline to it. And, you know, we do we're all overwhelmed with with work and with requirements, and it's a question of making priorities, but, it's a discipline to to make yourself pause. And the more important the issue and the more firmly held different convictions and perspectives, the more you have to pause, notice that as kind of a red flag, and really give it some thought as to whether or not you've given this a sufficient degree of critical thinking, I think, and to try to work through. And and I think the training that get that that lawyers get into the principles of, critical thinking at a good training program And just the act and experience of working with senior lawyers and watching them with clients, work through these things, it gives you more exposure than an ability to recognize and try to exercise that, brain, in that, intellectual muscle.

Christopher Stephens [00:36:58]:
Well, look, Chris, we could do this forever. This was such a great conversation. I really appreciate hearing, your series of two year stops that became much longer along the way. And someone who's in a position like yours, I know how busy it is. I'm grateful that you've taken the time to chat with me, and hopefully our interview goes out to some people who need to hear it. I always like to end my conversations by asking for a piece of advice, although you've given a bunch already for newer lawyers in the profession, or maybe is there something you wish you knew when you were just getting started on that first two year stint that you know now that you'd wanna share with folks who are about to start maybe their first two year stint of many?

Chris Stevens [00:37:36]:
Yeah. I think, again, making plans is important. I think general Eisenhower said that the strategic plans aren't worth the paper they're written on, but strategic planning is critical for some of that effect and certainly more colorful than that. But don't reflexively shy away from change. The best laid plans often materialize into, better plans and better objectives and better results. And I think that's really important is with keeping your eyes open and continuously acquiring knowledge and and meeting and networking people comes opportunity. And while changes are often difficult, they almost invariably, at least thinking optimistically, come out for the better and give you an enriching professional and personal experience.

Christopher Stephens [00:38:18]:
Well, your story alone is one of many plans and many changes in plan, and we got to hear it. So I really appreciate it. Thank you for taking the time to do this, and I hope we can keep in touch. And thanks again. Thanks, John. Again, I am Jonah Perlin,

Jonah Perlin [00:38:32]:
and this is the How I Lawyer podcast. Thanks to podcast sponsor, LawPods, for their expert editing. If you're a lawyer considering starting your own podcast, definitely check them out at lawpods.com. And thanks to you for listening. If you enjoyed the episode, I hope you'll consider sharing it with friends and colleagues or on social media. And of course, if you haven't already done so, please sign up for the email list at howIlawyer.com or subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. As always, if you have comments, suggestions, or ideas for the show, please reach out to me at howIlawyer@gmail.com, or at jonapyrlin on Twitter. Thanks again for listening, and have a great week.