December 5, 2024 • 39 mins
Craig Gaver shares insights into his work in international arbitration, judgment enforcement, and sovereign immunity. Craig reflects on his career journey, from political science to international law, including his inspiring role in a wrongful conviction case featured in Netflix’s The Innocence Files. The discussion also highlights career advice for aspiring lawyers and the importance of balance and self-care in the demanding legal field.
================
Guest Info:
Craig Gaver is a seasoned attorney with over a decade of international dispute resolution experience, representing clients across industries like energy, mining, infrastructure, and finance. Craig is currently Counsel at Bluestone PC. His practice spans arbitration, litigation, enforcement of judgments, and issues involving sovereign immunity, economic sanctions, and public international law.
Website: https://www.bluestonelaw.com/team/craig-d-gaver
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/craig-gaver-96005b191/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
have maybe the latest of 니
(00:01):
j δεν schaffen opened
related
All right, we are back with the advocate next door.
(00:31):
Today's a special week.
It's Washington Arbitration Week and we have very special guests.
I am Kelby Balena and I'm here with my co-host.
Hello everybody.
My name is Margarita Rango and I hope you guys are enjoying Arbitration Week.
Today we are here with Craig Gaver.
We actually used to work together back at Allen & Overy before Allen & Overy became
(00:55):
A&O Sherman.
I was very much impressed with Craig because you seem very much like a leader in this industry,
but you also seem really knowledgeable about a lot of different things, not just the specific
niche like Latin America or Europe.
You knew a lot about a lot of different areas of international law.
So welcome to the podcast.
(01:17):
Thank you very much Kelby, Margarita.
It's a pleasure to be here.
So starting off right now, currently you are at Bluestone, which is, would you say it's
like a boutique or just a smaller firm?
It's absolutely a boutique.
So Bluestone does litigation arbitration, mostly in federal state courts.
We do a lot of asset recovery.
(01:37):
So a lot of post-judgment, post-arbitral award enforcement work, very investigation-driven,
finding out where the assets are, where they're being moved, how to track them down, how to
ultimately attach or secure them to enforce a judgment that's already been adjudicated
months maybe even years ago.
I think there's a lot of people who are new to this field or may not know what exactly
(02:01):
you do.
I mean, a lot of times you don't see your profession on the TV screen.
Is this kind of a field that you would have taken a class in law school or is this something
post law school?
No, this is entirely post law school and I agree, it's certainly not what you would see
in suit.
But the average person on the street outside, their idea of a lawsuit is someone wronged
(02:21):
me, I go to court, I sue them, I win, I get a judgment in my favor, that's it.
But that's rarely the case.
If there are two parties that have a long standing commercial relationship, then obviously
the losing party will want to pay and preserve that relationship and get on with their business.
But a lot of defendants or losing parties won't pay up unless they're compelled to.
(02:44):
So you have a judgment and it's only as good as your means to enforce it.
So obviously the court can retain supervisory jurisdiction, they will aid the plaintiff,
the judgment creditor, but it's incumbent upon the winning party to go out and actually
satisfy the award if the defendant or the judgment debtor refuses to pay.
So I think the way that I would relate it is in family court, I can garnish wages, I
(03:07):
could force an enforcement of payment through wages or some kind of fee or something like
that.
How does this enforcement aspect, how does that actually work?
Right, they don't garnish wages, but if your defendant or judgment debtor is an individual,
you can garnish those wages subject to certain protections provided for in statute.
The whole process is really incumbent upon the party that has the judgment in their favor,
(03:31):
that wants to be satisfied.
The court has supervisory jurisdiction to assist you in that endeavor, but they tried
your case, they gave you a judgment, it's on you to go out, find the assets, take whatever
means of enforcement are available to you.
So to get back to your question, yes, you can garnish wages.
So if I have a judgment against an individual debtor, I can submit a request of writ of
(03:52):
garnishment to the court, they'll endorse it, they'll send it to the employer and the
employer is required to give you a certain amount of the wages.
Now they will protect a different amount for the worker.
You can't see someone's entire paycheck because then they don't have the means to support
themselves.
So there are certainly a lot of protections in the law.
There are other means.
So you can garnish property other than wages.
(04:14):
One thing we do is send post-judgment third party subpoenas, often to banks, other financial
institutions and say, we know this individual or this company has an account or multiple
accounts with you, provide us the information, we take a look at the transactions, where
they're coming, where they're going, and basically follow the money trail.
And then finally, very sexy and we've seen it on cops and shows in the past, that you
(04:36):
can seize physical property too.
So if someone, the flashy car, the real estate, anything else of value, again, you have to
go through the legal process, you have to get the course endorsement to take it, but
you have the right to seize it and either keep it or sell it for value, et cetera.
Going back with your background and how you got here, are you actually local to DDC?
(05:00):
Because I realized you've lived here for a long time.
I am local.
I'm not a DC native, but I'm from Frederick County, Maryland, a small town called Myersville.
And you went to school here as well?
Did undergrad in College Park, so a little bit east of the Beltway.
I got JD from Catholic here in DC and then went elsewhere for an LLM later in my career.
(05:22):
But very much this is my professional hometown, I call it.
I have to say that I love Catholic University.
They have this beautiful Basilica.
I've never been.
My mother loves to go to Mass there.
It's amazing.
Every time she comes and visits, you have to go to the Basilica.
My mother and my grandmother, so they're fans of your university.
It's funny you should say that.
So we held our commencement there.
(05:43):
It was very hot that day.
And then my grandparents came to the graduation ceremony too.
They all had to walk up a very large hill to get to it.
I was standing in line to walk across the stage.
My younger brother was tasked with getting my grandparents up the hill.
And he to this day is resentful about having to do that.
So more power to your family.
(06:04):
That's amazing.
Did you ever thought about becoming a lawyer?
It wasn't something I really thought about until after I got my bachelor's degree.
It was very much happenstance that I ended up in this profession.
Very glad that I did.
But kind of a circuitous path to get here.
Your bachelor was in a legal area?
No.
I was in government and politics, which is what University of Maryland calls a political
(06:28):
science degree.
I'm fascinated by a lot of things, but not many things that can be easily characterized
into subject matters.
That was okay.
This is something I'm vaguely interested in.
We'll figure a career out later.
So after I finished up, a friend of mine was working as a paralegal at a law firm downtown.
She was leaving to go off and do other things.
And she said, oh, I could put in work for you.
(06:49):
You could probably take my job.
And I did.
That's nice.
It was a great introduction.
It was very fortunate to me because the last thing, 21 years old, just graduated, the last
thing you want to think about is a career or anything like that.
It worked out really well.
Even while I was doing that, I still wasn't decided on going back to law school.
I had a very important and meaningful case that kind of inspired me to do that.
(07:10):
I was working for a firm downtown and they took on a pro bono case after, I guess I was
involved for about 18 months.
After several years of effort, succeeded in getting a wrongfully convicted inmate off
death row in Texas.
Wow.
Yeah.
And I'll tell you a little bit about the case.
I don't want to spoil too much, but I can direct listeners to documentary that was later
(07:33):
made about our client's case.
If you go to Netflix, there's a documentary called The Innocence Files that was made in
collaboration with The Innocence Project.
Episode eight is about a gentleman named Alfred Duane Brown.
Alfred was our client.
There's tons of background from it.
We don't have nearly enough time to go into this, but there was a very high profile robbery
(07:55):
and murder of a policeman who responded.
There were two defendants that were at the scene.
They basically turned on our guy who was not at the scene at all and in fact had an alibi.
That alibi was suppressed during the trial.
He was convicted along with the other two and put on death row.
It took years of research.
(08:16):
We did a habeas appeal.
There were some other eligibility for death penalty issues that should have gotten him
excused, but eventually we uncovered the alibi, which was a phone call he made to his girlfriend
while the crime was in progress.
So he was on the other side of town.
Those phone records had been suppressed for a number of years by the prosecution.
Wow.
So just really fascinating.
(08:37):
I encourage you to watch the episode.
I hear a lot of stories like this.
This is just shocking.
Yeah.
It's very shocking.
It was certainly an eye-opening experience.
I traveled to Houston, the scene of the crime on a couple of occasions.
On one time we went to the housing development where he was born and raised and it was a
very oblique scene, you can imagine.
Really hard and completely different than anything I'd ever seen before.
(09:00):
It really kind of increased my empathy for folks caught up in the larger system.
So I encourage you to watch the episode.
It's really fascinating.
I will.
That experience said, okay, maybe I can make a career out of this.
Maybe this is something I need to start thinking about.
That's amazing.
I kind of recall though that you had some kind of background in music.
Yeah, that's right.
That was basically my life during teenage years and into young adulthood.
(09:22):
I got into string instruments in the fifth grade.
I started playing the cello.
I switched to string bass.
I lived across the street from the elementary school.
I actually rode my bicycle to school with a cello.
With a cello?
Oh my God.
That's not easy.
No, not at all.
I found a way.
The following year I started taking a bus to middle school, which was in the next town
over and so had to lug the large string bass.
(09:44):
You were the kid with the cello.
Oh yeah, absolutely.
So I had to lug a very large string bass onto the school bus, sat in the seat next to me.
Very bizarre looking.
I had a trombone, so I know that this is not easy.
You have to find a seat by yourself because your instrument's so big.
Years later in different circumstances I started playing the tuba.
My mother said, why couldn't you pick small men to play the instrument?
(10:07):
I don't know.
It's perfect to me.
Next one's the harp.
Actually, as an undergrad, one of the girls that lived on my floor played the harp.
She was very talented, but it was really a chore to lug around.
But it was a huge part of my life.
I played with some close friends in high school and thereafter, so we had a small jazz group.
I got really into what most folks would know as bluegrass, call it more like roots or
(10:29):
old time music.
I was in a two day metal band in college.
I just kind of dabbled with a lot of folks.
Then eventually I guess I got to a point where either my talent ran out or I wanted to do
different things that kind of put it aside and didn't really perform or play as much
anymore.
But certainly that was a huge part of my life during those really important developmental
(10:50):
years.
Did the band have a name?
Yeah.
Well, so the band went through several different stages.
There's a story about how we were founded and that's how the name came.
In high school, there was a county wide catered dinner for teachers that excelled very well.
I guess the county school board or whatever put it on.
So they approached our high school band director and said, hey, you have a good jazz band as
(11:13):
a class, like 25 students.
Can you hand pick a couple of them?
So he did.
So there were seven of us and we worked up a couple of tunes and we didn't have a name
at that point, but we went and played at the teacher banquet and all the teachers had this
nice catered meal, multi-courses and then they're like, oh, thank you for playing.
You did a great job here.
(11:34):
There's a table with lunch for you in the corner.
And we went over there and it was like chicken tenders and French fries.
Like we were children, 16, 17 years old.
We're in a band.
We need to eat.
Yeah, exactly.
So very cheeky after that, we started, we decided to continue to play together and we
were known as the chicken tenders for a while.
(11:54):
And then there was some personnel changes, people went off to college.
You guys were very creative.
I know.
The powers of the fee, I think felt very bad about it.
So maybe we were a bit rude and kind of rubbing their noses in it.
But then let's see, there's personnel changes.
We played with a guy named Dan Effland who was extraordinarily talented guitarist and
(12:15):
later played professionally.
So we were the Dan Effland band for a little while.
And then shortly Dan left, he went off to school and there were four of us remaining
and I go, what, you know, what could we name our band next?
At the time, because I was a huge nerd in high school, I was really big into Greek and
Roman mythology.
And I said, why don't we name ourselves Orpheus right after the, I don't think he was a God,
(12:36):
I think he was immortal, but he played the lyre, you know, the little harp.
He went down to the underworld to bring his wife back.
He was kind of a symbolic of musicianship.
So we named ourselves the Orpheus Jazz Quartet.
And that was basically the name that stuck for the next couple of years.
That's fascinating.
I love that.
Yeah.
You ended up learning a lot about working as a team.
(12:57):
And so you ended up working at, was it Squire, I believe?
Yes, that's correct.
So immediately after law school, I joined one of the predecessor firms.
So it was Pat and Boggs at the time.
This was 2012.
And so two years after that, they went through the merger and became Squire Pat and Boggs.
And then you had transitioned over to Allen and Overie, which is where I met you.
(13:20):
I came over to practice or work on a team with international arbitration.
And you had been working in that field for a while as well.
Are you still working with international arbitration now?
I am.
Yeah.
One thing I really like about the field is that you can participate in a lot of different
ways.
You can engage in thought leadership.
You can work big cases.
(13:41):
You can work pieces of cases.
You and I, Kelby, have done some really large monster cases together.
Being in a boutique firm now, we do other things, but we can still do the award enforcement
actions.
It seems to me award enforcement, distinct from US court judgment enforcement, could
really be a field unto itself.
(14:01):
A lot of the award enforcement actions in district and circuit courts right now, similar
actions over in the UK, Switzerland being a big hub for or a seat of arbitrations, obviously,
then a hub for award enforcement.
You could make an entire legal practice out of enforcing awards.
So one of the things I didn't really understand back in the day, why do people pick international
(14:23):
arbitration as an option?
And one of those reasons is enforcement.
For law students who are listening right now, they may not have any ideas like, well, how
does that actually work?
How does a court enforce against, let's say, a sovereign or company that might not be in
the same jurisdiction?
What leads party to choose international arbitration is they might be coming from two different
(14:46):
jurisdictions, two different legal backgrounds.
They want a way to reconcile those differences and come up with a very neutral means of adjudicating
any dispute that might arise in the future.
Those incompatibilities in the background actually lead to a more direct, in theory,
means of enforcement later.
So we started a conversation.
I was talking about enforcing US federal or state court judgments.
(15:09):
So again, the onus is really on kind of the judgment holder to go out and do the work
to do that.
And it's actually counterintuitively for the students more difficult to enforce a foreign
judgment in the US than it is a foreign arbitral award.
So we have state statutes say, OK, we're going to recognize a Utah judgment in Virginia
(15:30):
as though it were a Virginia judgment.
It's never as direct for doing that on the international level.
In contrast, in international arbitration, we have the New York Convention, we have the
Panama Convention, we have the Exit Convention, where the US federal government has agreed
to enforce foreign arbitral awards as though they were domestic judgments.
(15:50):
So it's easier to enforce a foreign arbitral award because US courts do so as a matter
of federal treaty law, whereas enforcement of foreign judgments are governed by different
state level laws.
And governments just comply with this?
They're just like, sure, you can take me to court in US court.
That's fine and dandy for them because they signed these treaties.
I mean, when you sign the treaty, you don't ever expect to get to have an award rendered
(16:14):
against you someday.
But it never plays out that way, unfortunately.
So no, I mean, there is award enforcement is just as serious and big a deal as judgment
enforcement.
But the legal regime that governs it is, I think, a little bit clearer and a little more
direct.
And how does sovereign immunity, because I know that also plays a big role in your professional
(16:35):
life.
How does sovereign immunity comes into the matter?
You're right, Margarita.
It's a big part of my legal practice and actually something that's fascinated me since law schools.
I'm very glad to be working in this field.
Sovereign immunity is basically the theory that foreign states and their governments,
certain entities that fall within that umbrella have immunity in the courts of other states.
(16:58):
It operates on two realms, international sovereign immunity and the domestic law of sovereign
immunity, which is basically how we in the US or in other countries implement that international
principle.
In the US, we do it through the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, which governs the state itself,
certain state entities, state assets.
It doesn't embrace individuals.
(17:20):
It doesn't cover natural persons.
They have other bodies of immunity under different bodies of law.
But whenever a state is sued in US courts, there are very narrow jurisdictional bases
for that suit to proceed.
Otherwise, the US court doesn't have jurisdiction.
One of those narrow bases is in fact to enforce arbitral wards against the state that have
(17:41):
already been rendered or an agreement to arbitrate.
So we see this a little less frequently, although it certainly happens that you can compel a
state to arbitration if they've signed the agreement to arbitrate.
And the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act is meant to secure that right.
In the international sector, does it expand to the point where you're also dealing with
(18:02):
other areas of law when you're dealing with enforcement?
Does it ever go into other areas like white collar?
Or is it usually just kind of isolated in this kind of international sector?
No, I think there's a ton of overlap.
A lot of disputes start as white collar investigations.
They tend to sprawl in a bunch of different directions.
(18:22):
One big case I'm thinking of, I have not worked on it, but I've written a bit about it, was
the Malaysian Sovereign Wealth Fund.
So that, I guess, kind of spans the gamut.
There were white collar investigations, there were asset tracing, there were international
arbitrations that were downstream of kind of the initial wrongdoing.
It really kind of has spilled over into a lot of different areas of law.
(18:44):
It also involves sovereign immunity that we were talking about a moment ago.
In addition to the state itself, state assets and state property are afforded certain presumptive
immunities.
If you meet the jurisdictional criteria, you can proceed against those assets, but they're
very narrow.
Some categories of assets have a heightened level of protection afforded to them under
(19:05):
the domestic statute, and one of those is central bank assets.
One of the interesting emerging areas of law within sovereign immunity are sovereign wealth
funds.
So are they analogous to or functionally the same as central banks?
Are they different?
Are they independent commercial enterprises?
It really kind of depends on how the sovereign wealth fund is set up.
Certainly the state that owns it or manages their sovereign wealth fund wants to consider
(19:28):
it analogous to central bank assets that are basically untouchable.
Does someone have to be in Washington DC to work in this field?
No, but it helps.
Obviously, New York's the other big one too, just because it's the main financial center.
DC special, in addition to having all the embassies and missions here, it's basically
the default venue for suing a foreign state in the US.
(19:51):
I think the statute is 28 USC 1391, but I should look it up in case I'm wrong.
The venue statute specifies the district court for Washington DC.
If nowhere else, you can always sue a foreign sovereign here.
Certainly that makes it, in my view, the most important jurisdiction, but these suits can
arise anywhere.
There are very important sovereign immunity precedents from California, Houston, Miami,
(20:14):
anywhere that you'd expect to have international commerce in the US.
A suit could arise there.
So turning to, I guess, your average law student who's hearing about international arbitration
and your work with foreign sovereign immunities, any suggestions as to how somebody gets into
this area?
Yeah.
I mean, I think there are general suggestions that would apply to all the law students.
(20:35):
So I mean, read as much as you can, meet as many people as you can, write as much as you
can, participate in the community, is the advice that I give to law students and to
young lawyers.
You are at the precipice of a career that, God willing, will be many decades for you.
We are going to be colleagues in the same field, even if I or you or whoever is a little
(20:56):
bit older.
And so the advice I give to young lawyers is basically announce yourself as a member
of this field.
Obviously, you have to acknowledge and respect your elders.
I'm doing the air quotes right now.
But the people that have been working on it.
But at the end of the day, we are colleagues in the same field.
You should command respect.
And the way to do that is to get out there and actually be active.
(21:17):
More specifically, sovereign immunity is a fairly niche area of law.
But the DC District Court and Circuit Court are pumping out opinions left and right.
The Supreme Court pretty regularly rules on sovereign immunity, about two or three cases
every term.
It's a constantly evolving area of law.
(21:37):
But that's not the only one.
If you're doing cross border or white collar crime, if it's international competition law,
I mean, the best thing you can do is to get a good sense of the fundamentals because they're
cutting edge topics they're going to change as your career progresses.
Get familiar with issues.
The other side of the coin is don't feel like you have to master it all at the outset.
(21:58):
If someone came to me and said, Greg, I don't know anything about sovereign immunity.
You can have a very fulfilling and enriching career working in an international sphere
without necessarily litigating a foreign sovereign immunity dispute.
So don't despair if it seems like a lot to wrap your arms around.
Was this the area that you were targeting when you left law school?
Because you started with the death penalty cases and now you got into this area.
(22:22):
I'm not sure if there was a spark that brought you to this side.
It's a great question because I certainly did not expect my career to evolve in the
way it did.
In the JD program, I did not take any classes on international law at all.
That's one motivation I had for going back for an LLM degree years later to fill in the
gaps of my knowledge.
But I did take a class on conflicts of law, which I highly recommend if any students are
(22:45):
listening right now.
It was mostly domestic conflicts, but it talked about international conflicts as well.
And then with my favorite professor at Catholic, I took a class called national security law.
And we used a casebook, it was Bradley Goldsmith, it was actually called foreign relations law.
That had an aspect of international law in it, even though it wasn't the entirety of
it.
There's one module within that class on the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act.
(23:08):
So it was just one of many topics they covered.
But for whatever reason, it reached out and grabbed me and I said, Oh my god, this is
so cool.
And then, you know, you join a law firm, you do what they assign you to do.
And I didn't expect that years down the road, I would actually work on the subject that
really captivated me as a law student.
But the other bit of advice I would give is your career naturally evolves, ebbs and flows,
(23:31):
it takes you in different directions, you can guide it to a certain extent, but just
embrace the journey.
To go back to your question, Kelby, I did not expect to be doing this in law school,
I did the viz moot.
I did not expect to be practicing international arbitration just because I knew, certainly
commercial international arbitration just not as prominent in the US as it is elsewhere.
(23:51):
So very kind of serendipitous and very pleased that I was able to kind of take those subjects
and topics that I really loved in law school and later make a career out of them.
Do you come from a background of lawyers?
Because it sounds like you're immersed all over the world right now, it just sounds like
you have so much great knowledge.
Are you like a first gen lawyer?
(24:12):
Immersed all over the world is maybe a polite way of saying stretched thin.
But no, I am a first generation lawyer.
I guess the only lawyer I knew before I got to law school was a family friend from growing
up.
But he was a real estate transaction lawyer, fantastic guy.
He bought and sold farms all over Frederick County.
And certainly that was not a model for my career.
(24:33):
And at that point in my life, as we spoke about, I wasn't really thinking about it.
The decision to pursue a career in law basically made while I was working as a paralegal and
then going through the process and accumulating knowledge not just about the law itself, but
how the legal industry operates has been very eye opening.
And besides the law, international arbitration, sovereign immunity, your professional career,
(24:57):
writing as well, because you were telling us that you also write and publish.
What else do you like to do?
Like to recharge and spend your free time because you are constantly traveling, I guess.
It gets some tired sometimes, no?
It does.
And I think as I get on with my life, the importance of self care and balance has become
(25:18):
even more important because in your 20s and 30s, you can crank out the really long hours,
the jet lag, you can take it.
Jet lag is a very important point.
Exactly.
But you get a bit older and it takes more of a toll.
So I'm a big believer in self care, however you define it.
For me, I've always revisited the sound mind, sound body.
(25:40):
I try to be very active.
I try to spend as much time outside as possible.
I absolutely love hiking.
That is a pastime that's not always compatible with the practice of law.
Even, oh, I want to spend a summer there.
The reception is not great.
The reception is not great.
And in fact, years ago...
Sometimes that's okay.
That's better.
No, it's been, I guess, 2015, nearly a decade ago.
(26:03):
I did an amazing trip with a friend of mine.
So we went to the back country in Alaska and I guess it was about 10 days we were pack
rafting, which is you hike into really rough terrain.
You get to a river, you inflate the personal raft that you hiked in with and then float
on down the river.
So no reception.
I mean, 100 miles from the nearest human and I made expressly sure that I had permission
(26:27):
and no competing obligations.
But I sent like four or five reminders that I am not exaggerating when I say I won't have
any reception whatsoever.
A lot of times I don't even send an out of office message because I feel like no one's
going to care.
Yeah.
And you can't get away with that too often, which is why I say it's not always compatible
with a long-term career in law.
But for me, it gives a great sense of balance, again, kind of grew up in a more bucolic setting,
(26:53):
being in touch with nature.
It sounds a little woo, but it's true.
But this trip sounded really great.
So then you make it there and then you just float back down on your raft.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So we hiked for about three and a half days and we were carrying more than we should,
probably about 50 pounds of gear.
My friend, who's much more experienced in the back country than I was, he's like, I'm
(27:16):
bored with hiking so much.
There's no trail.
You're basically walking through marsh.
So a mile an hour, if you're lucky.
He said, I'm tired of walking.
Let's just put into the river a little earlier than we expected.
So we did, but we were very far up in Alaska, gates of the Arctic National Park.
So what would later become a massive river was still kind of a very fast, narrow moving
(27:39):
stream at that point.
So we put into the stream and just shot us down.
And it was really, I don't know how to describe it.
It's just very harrowing.
I ended up not capsizing, but kind of getting jammed up against the bank.
I had to step out into the water to kind of balance my raft and all my gear because obviously
if you lose it, you've got nothing.
(28:00):
So in doing that, I don't know, the air temperature must've been barely above freezing.
So I stepped up waist deep in the water for a couple of minutes, got back in and started
paddle and I said, Grant, I'm losing feeling, I think I'm having a serious hypothermia.
And just to say that there may not be good cell phone service here.
Yeah, literally medical.
(28:21):
So pulled over, built an emergency fire, got into the sleeping bag, warmed up for a little
bit.
So it was no joke, but great fun.
Again, an excellent counterpoint to spending most of the day in an office looking at a
computer.
Last thing I'll say is I've met other folks in this profession, some of whom are mutual
friends of ours that have really gotten into hiking and camping and realized what a phenomenal
(28:43):
experience it is.
I didn't grow up with it necessarily in the same way that I did.
And it's heartening to see people appreciate what a great experience it can be.
I love hiking, but I'll do it for like two or three hours.
Amazing.
Again, I can't do it as much anymore.
But you don't encounter bears or other wildlife or things like that?
No, I'll tell you a different story.
(29:03):
So during COVID, my brother and I did a cross country road trip.
We spent a lot of time in the mountain west where neither of us had been much before.
We were passing through the Big Sky town resort in Montana and said, oh, here's an interesting
day hike we can do in the morning.
We'll knock it out in the morning, three, four hours, then we'll drive the rest of the
day.
(29:25):
So you're in bear country.
It's very well posted.
It's very obvious.
And the responsible thing to do is carry bear spray with you or some means of protecting
yourself.
We're not going to see anything, we'll be fast, whatever.
So we get out there, we're some of the first people on the trail.
This particular trail we're doing was an out and back and we were a couple hundred yards
from the turnaround.
(29:45):
When we hear a crash in the woods, we look up and about 50 yards in front of us were
two very large brown bears.
My heart just stopped.
It's very scary.
My brother picked up a rock and I'm like, what are you going to do with that?
And fortunately, they kind of took off the other direction and they were more afraid
of us than we were them.
(30:05):
So we came back as we were going back to our car, we started passing, you know, other groups
of hikers are coming out for the day and we're like, oh, we saw a bear, we saw a bear.
That's okay.
We've got spray.
I'm like, ah, yes, the responsible.
If you're a beginner hiker and you want to go hiking around the DMV area, where can you
go?
Great question.
DC, believe it or not, is a great city for hiking.
(30:28):
So first I'd recommend just anywhere in Rock Creek Park, Rock Creek Park, distinct from
say Central Park in New York, splinters into all these different directions.
So for many years I lived in a neighborhood called Mount Pleasant.
So it's near Columbia Heights, right up 16th Street.
You could just walk out your back door across the street and there's a little path leading
into the woods.
(30:49):
Within two minutes, you're in the middle of the woods, no cars, no people, no houses.
It's really lovely.
That's a great place to start all these intersecting trails within the city.
Outside of the city, the really popular one is a trail called the Billy Goat Trail.
So that's over Carderock, Great Falls on the Maryland-Virginia border.
I don't know, maybe a 20, 25 minute drive west of the city.
(31:10):
It's short, but it's a lot of fun.
So you're kind of jumping over rocks like a Billy Goat.
Beautiful view of the Potomac River.
But no bears.
No bears, not yet.
And then kind of farther out, just a lot of really great smaller trails.
I was very fortunate.
Where I grew up in Frederick County, the Appalachian Trail ran right through my hometown.
Growing up, I could do Annapolis Rocks.
(31:30):
It was very close to my hometown.
It's a very popular day hike for folks that live in Baltimore, Washington.
Drive an hour.
It's actually a pretty popular rock climbing place too.
So looking at that, and obviously Virginia, just tons of opportunities.
Sounds nice.
I definitely need to try it.
I went to Great Falls once.
I love Great Falls.
I spent like 10 minutes jumping around rocks.
(31:53):
After 10 minutes, my legs were hurting.
So I definitely need to keep trying to see if I improve.
I once joined a dog group and we took our dogs to go hiking.
And we were going to the Shenandoah.
And we started hiking and hiking and all the dogs are just leaving.
It's the most wonderful, amazing thing when you just watch dogs being wild.
(32:17):
But no one told us that it was going to be a 10 mile hike.
We were just exhausted by the end of it.
But it's incredibly refreshing.
Last thing you're thinking about is that email that you haven't responded to or anything
like that.
So it's a great way to unwind and regroup.
Yeah.
And getting back to the heart of your question, I've always found it's a nice counterpoint
(32:38):
and I find it recharging, energizing, and ultimately makes me a better professional
too to give myself the opportunities to do something else.
I wish there was some kind of hiking group for the arbitration folk.
Maybe we'll start.
Oh my God, let's start it.
I do want to ask something else to you, Craig.
What advice would you give to people that are thinking about pursuing a career in the
(33:03):
legal field or in international arbitration?
Excellent question.
And I do feel that a lot.
As I alluded to earlier, I went back mid-career and did an LLM degree for several reasons.
And in the course of doing that degree, most of my classmates were foreign lawyers who
then became LLM students and wanted to break into the legal field in the US.
(33:25):
There were very few others like me who were US trained and educated lawyers that wanted
to do it for other reasons.
As I got back into practice, I speak to a lot of JD and LLM students just because I
bump into them at events.
So I have the opportunity to give this advice a lot and I really cherish it because a lot
of people more senior than me have helped me in my career and I like to give back to
them.
(33:46):
The most important thing is to not lose heart and not get discouraged, especially for foreign
qualified lawyers.
You get the degree, you've got the clock ticking, you've got a couple months to find a job,
it can be very, very stressful.
It can be very demoralizing.
The best advice I can give is to believe in yourself, don't lose heart, don't give up.
Even if it doesn't work out in this narrow window of opportunity, you are still a member
(34:09):
of this profession and our field and my colleague in the field.
And even if it didn't work out within these six months, there are still very meaningful
ways for you to launch or relaunch your career as the case may be.
So the most important advice is don't lose heart.
The other thing is, again, talk to as many people as possible.
I'm fairly introverted.
(34:30):
I don't go out of my way to meet new people.
I find it very challenging, so I have to force myself to do it.
Many others are not that way.
So very personality driven, love meeting new people.
The more people you can meet in the beginning or initial steps of your career, the more
it redounds your benefit later.
I saw that in the breach.
When I was a younger lawyer, I didn't do that.
(34:51):
As I progressed throughout my career, I said, I see these people popping up again and again.
If I had introduced myself earlier or formed a better bond, that would be helping me out
now.
Sometimes it can feel very transactional.
And I think that makes a lot of people, including myself, uncomfortable.
But it's not unnatural.
It's not bad.
Colleagues in the same field, you're going to see each other all the time.
(35:11):
You might be referring each other cases.
You might be referring each other work.
It's a perfectly natural thing to ask and give favors.
The way to do that is just going to the events, cold calling people, having coffees.
You don't need to have an ask.
You can just get to know people.
So that's the best advice.
I think it's really hard when you're introverted.
It's just like another coffee, another networking event, another like you're trying to break
(35:36):
a circle and introduce yourself.
People are coming to you randomly asking what you do.
It's not easy.
That is challenging for some people.
And it's something they don't really teach you at law school either.
Yeah.
And I think the best thing to do is give people grace.
I'm tired.
I worked all day.
I don't want to go to that happy hour, but I know I need to to meet people.
And you get there and maybe you're not as gregarious as you ought to be.
(35:58):
Or maybe someone thinks that guy's not very chatty.
And the important thing is to be understanding.
People are making an effort.
It's equally incumbent upon the other person to reach out.
Sometimes after a really great event, I want to get to a point where we formed a nice group
where we can get the after hour drinks, after the event drinks.
(36:20):
Then we can actually talk because then especially law students, they will actually start asking
you the real questions.
They're like what are our chances of getting a job in this industry or that industry?
Or they just want advice as to how they connect or make a connection because I'm sure, especially
these days, it must be kind of scary to realize how much competition there is out there and
(36:41):
perhaps not a lot of jobs.
Yeah I guess another bit of advice for students or younger attorneys is to pay attention to
the legal market, pay attention to trends in the industry, especially for people working
in DC.
Presidential administration, big initiatives in Congress, that will dictate a lot of the
work that's going to be coming in the next couple of years.
(37:02):
So in earlier parts of my career when I was job hunting, I would look at the listings
and there are certain fields that would pop up all the time, like antitrust lawyers are
always in high demand.
That'll be less the case if there's an administration that doesn't prioritize enforcement, but it's
such a specialized niche field that if I were a law student and I had even a little bit
of a quants background, I'd be like, oh my God, I should definitely be an antitrust lawyer.
(37:26):
That's not the only one, there are others too, but the more you kind of pay attention
to these trends and understand that enforcement matters and whatever area of law kind of ebb
and flow, if you pay attention to that, then you can make decisions that'll benefit your
career down the road.
Where do you see the international sector going?
Is AI going to be taking over?
(37:46):
Are we going to be entering new sectors and different things like that?
I know who I'm speaking to.
I'm very much a muddier.
I would love to practice law with a quill in ink, but I missed that train.
In the robe?
Yeah, exactly.
No, that's right up my alley.
So now I think AI is undoubtedly a major important force in the practice of law now and will
(38:08):
be so more in the future, especially for dispute resolution attorneys.
AI can never replace an attorney in the courtroom.
It can't replace an attorney before an arbitral tribunal, but it will absolutely assist those
legal teams.
It might replace some legal functions, but ultimately if your job is persuasion, a computer
(38:29):
program is not going to be the one to do that.
A human has to deliver that.
I agree.
I have to say I agree.
Well, thank you very much for coming and joining us and having our little discussion here.
It's great to see you, by the way.
You seem like you're way more refreshed than I've seen you in the past.
I've been hiking.
Yeah, that's really great.
So thank you very much again for joining us and we look forward to seeing where your career
(38:54):
takes you.
It's my pleasure.
Thank you both for having me.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
have maybe the latest of 니
(00:01):
j δεν schaffen opened
related
All right, we are back with the advocate next door.
(00:31):
Today's a special week.
It's Washington Arbitration Week and we have very special guests.
I am Kelby Balena and I'm here with my co-host.
Hello everybody.
My name is Margarita Rango and I hope you guys are enjoying Arbitration Week.
Today we are here with Craig Gaver.
We actually used to work together back at Allen & Overy before Allen & Overy became
(00:55):
A&O Sherman.
I was very much impressed with Craig because you seem very much like a leader in this industry,
but you also seem really knowledgeable about a lot of different things, not just the specific
niche like Latin America or Europe.
You knew a lot about a lot of different areas of international law.
So welcome to the podcast.
(01:17):
Thank you very much Kelby, Margarita.
It's a pleasure to be here.
So starting off right now, currently you are at Bluestone, which is, would you say it's
like a boutique or just a smaller firm?
It's absolutely a boutique.
So Bluestone does litigation arbitration, mostly in federal state courts.
We do a lot of asset recovery.
(01:37):
So a lot of post-judgment, post-arbitral award enforcement work, very investigation-driven,
finding out where the assets are, where they're being moved, how to track them down, how to
ultimately attach or secure them to enforce a judgment that's already been adjudicated
months maybe even years ago.
I think there's a lot of people who are new to this field or may not know what exactly
(02:01):
you do.
I mean, a lot of times you don't see your profession on the TV screen.
Is this kind of a field that you would have taken a class in law school or is this something
post law school?
No, this is entirely post law school and I agree, it's certainly not what you would see
in suit.
But the average person on the street outside, their idea of a lawsuit is someone wronged
(02:21):
me, I go to court, I sue them, I win, I get a judgment in my favor, that's it.
But that's rarely the case.
If there are two parties that have a long standing commercial relationship, then obviously
the losing party will want to pay and preserve that relationship and get on with their business.
But a lot of defendants or losing parties won't pay up unless they're compelled to.
(02:44):
So you have a judgment and it's only as good as your means to enforce it.
So obviously the court can retain supervisory jurisdiction, they will aid the plaintiff,
the judgment creditor, but it's incumbent upon the winning party to go out and actually
satisfy the award if the defendant or the judgment debtor refuses to pay.
So I think the way that I would relate it is in family court, I can garnish wages, I
(03:07):
could force an enforcement of payment through wages or some kind of fee or something like
that.
How does this enforcement aspect, how does that actually work?
Right, they don't garnish wages, but if your defendant or judgment debtor is an individual,
you can garnish those wages subject to certain protections provided for in statute.
The whole process is really incumbent upon the party that has the judgment in their favor,
(03:31):
that wants to be satisfied.
The court has supervisory jurisdiction to assist you in that endeavor, but they tried
your case, they gave you a judgment, it's on you to go out, find the assets, take whatever
means of enforcement are available to you.
So to get back to your question, yes, you can garnish wages.
So if I have a judgment against an individual debtor, I can submit a request of writ of
(03:52):
garnishment to the court, they'll endorse it, they'll send it to the employer and the
employer is required to give you a certain amount of the wages.
Now they will protect a different amount for the worker.
You can't see someone's entire paycheck because then they don't have the means to support
themselves.
So there are certainly a lot of protections in the law.
There are other means.
So you can garnish property other than wages.
(04:14):
One thing we do is send post-judgment third party subpoenas, often to banks, other financial
institutions and say, we know this individual or this company has an account or multiple
accounts with you, provide us the information, we take a look at the transactions, where
they're coming, where they're going, and basically follow the money trail.
And then finally, very sexy and we've seen it on cops and shows in the past, that you
(04:36):
can seize physical property too.
So if someone, the flashy car, the real estate, anything else of value, again, you have to
go through the legal process, you have to get the course endorsement to take it, but
you have the right to seize it and either keep it or sell it for value, et cetera.
Going back with your background and how you got here, are you actually local to DDC?
(05:00):
Because I realized you've lived here for a long time.
I am local.
I'm not a DC native, but I'm from Frederick County, Maryland, a small town called Myersville.
And you went to school here as well?
Did undergrad in College Park, so a little bit east of the Beltway.
I got JD from Catholic here in DC and then went elsewhere for an LLM later in my career.
(05:22):
But very much this is my professional hometown, I call it.
I have to say that I love Catholic University.
They have this beautiful Basilica.
I've never been.
My mother loves to go to Mass there.
It's amazing.
Every time she comes and visits, you have to go to the Basilica.
My mother and my grandmother, so they're fans of your university.
It's funny you should say that.
So we held our commencement there.
(05:43):
It was very hot that day.
And then my grandparents came to the graduation ceremony too.
They all had to walk up a very large hill to get to it.
I was standing in line to walk across the stage.
My younger brother was tasked with getting my grandparents up the hill.
And he to this day is resentful about having to do that.
So more power to your family.
(06:04):
That's amazing.
Did you ever thought about becoming a lawyer?
It wasn't something I really thought about until after I got my bachelor's degree.
It was very much happenstance that I ended up in this profession.
Very glad that I did.
But kind of a circuitous path to get here.
Your bachelor was in a legal area?
No.
I was in government and politics, which is what University of Maryland calls a political
(06:28):
science degree.
I'm fascinated by a lot of things, but not many things that can be easily characterized
into subject matters.
That was okay.
This is something I'm vaguely interested in.
We'll figure a career out later.
So after I finished up, a friend of mine was working as a paralegal at a law firm downtown.
She was leaving to go off and do other things.
And she said, oh, I could put in work for you.
(06:49):
You could probably take my job.
And I did.
That's nice.
It was a great introduction.
It was very fortunate to me because the last thing, 21 years old, just graduated, the last
thing you want to think about is a career or anything like that.
It worked out really well.
Even while I was doing that, I still wasn't decided on going back to law school.
I had a very important and meaningful case that kind of inspired me to do that.
(07:10):
I was working for a firm downtown and they took on a pro bono case after, I guess I was
involved for about 18 months.
After several years of effort, succeeded in getting a wrongfully convicted inmate off
death row in Texas.
Wow.
Yeah.
And I'll tell you a little bit about the case.
I don't want to spoil too much, but I can direct listeners to documentary that was later
(07:33):
made about our client's case.
If you go to Netflix, there's a documentary called The Innocence Files that was made in
collaboration with The Innocence Project.
Episode eight is about a gentleman named Alfred Duane Brown.
Alfred was our client.
There's tons of background from it.
We don't have nearly enough time to go into this, but there was a very high profile robbery
(07:55):
and murder of a policeman who responded.
There were two defendants that were at the scene.
They basically turned on our guy who was not at the scene at all and in fact had an alibi.
That alibi was suppressed during the trial.
He was convicted along with the other two and put on death row.
It took years of research.
(08:16):
We did a habeas appeal.
There were some other eligibility for death penalty issues that should have gotten him
excused, but eventually we uncovered the alibi, which was a phone call he made to his girlfriend
while the crime was in progress.
So he was on the other side of town.
Those phone records had been suppressed for a number of years by the prosecution.
Wow.
So just really fascinating.
(08:37):
I encourage you to watch the episode.
I hear a lot of stories like this.
This is just shocking.
Yeah.
It's very shocking.
It was certainly an eye-opening experience.
I traveled to Houston, the scene of the crime on a couple of occasions.
On one time we went to the housing development where he was born and raised and it was a
very oblique scene, you can imagine.
Really hard and completely different than anything I'd ever seen before.
(09:00):
It really kind of increased my empathy for folks caught up in the larger system.
So I encourage you to watch the episode.
It's really fascinating.
I will.
That experience said, okay, maybe I can make a career out of this.
Maybe this is something I need to start thinking about.
That's amazing.
I kind of recall though that you had some kind of background in music.
Yeah, that's right.
That was basically my life during teenage years and into young adulthood.
(09:22):
I got into string instruments in the fifth grade.
I started playing the cello.
I switched to string bass.
I lived across the street from the elementary school.
I actually rode my bicycle to school with a cello.
With a cello?
Oh my God.
That's not easy.
No, not at all.
I found a way.
The following year I started taking a bus to middle school, which was in the next town
over and so had to lug the large string bass.
(09:44):
You were the kid with the cello.
Oh yeah, absolutely.
So I had to lug a very large string bass onto the school bus, sat in the seat next to me.
Very bizarre looking.
I had a trombone, so I know that this is not easy.
You have to find a seat by yourself because your instrument's so big.
Years later in different circumstances I started playing the tuba.
My mother said, why couldn't you pick small men to play the instrument?
(10:07):
I don't know.
It's perfect to me.
Next one's the harp.
Actually, as an undergrad, one of the girls that lived on my floor played the harp.
She was very talented, but it was really a chore to lug around.
But it was a huge part of my life.
I played with some close friends in high school and thereafter, so we had a small jazz group.
I got really into what most folks would know as bluegrass, call it more like roots or
(10:29):
old time music.
I was in a two day metal band in college.
I just kind of dabbled with a lot of folks.
Then eventually I guess I got to a point where either my talent ran out or I wanted to do
different things that kind of put it aside and didn't really perform or play as much
anymore.
But certainly that was a huge part of my life during those really important developmental
(10:50):
years.
Did the band have a name?
Yeah.
Well, so the band went through several different stages.
There's a story about how we were founded and that's how the name came.
In high school, there was a county wide catered dinner for teachers that excelled very well.
I guess the county school board or whatever put it on.
So they approached our high school band director and said, hey, you have a good jazz band as
(11:13):
a class, like 25 students.
Can you hand pick a couple of them?
So he did.
So there were seven of us and we worked up a couple of tunes and we didn't have a name
at that point, but we went and played at the teacher banquet and all the teachers had this
nice catered meal, multi-courses and then they're like, oh, thank you for playing.
You did a great job here.
(11:34):
There's a table with lunch for you in the corner.
And we went over there and it was like chicken tenders and French fries.
Like we were children, 16, 17 years old.
We're in a band.
We need to eat.
Yeah, exactly.
So very cheeky after that, we started, we decided to continue to play together and we
were known as the chicken tenders for a while.
(11:54):
And then there was some personnel changes, people went off to college.
You guys were very creative.
I know.
The powers of the fee, I think felt very bad about it.
So maybe we were a bit rude and kind of rubbing their noses in it.
But then let's see, there's personnel changes.
We played with a guy named Dan Effland who was extraordinarily talented guitarist and
(12:15):
later played professionally.
So we were the Dan Effland band for a little while.
And then shortly Dan left, he went off to school and there were four of us remaining
and I go, what, you know, what could we name our band next?
At the time, because I was a huge nerd in high school, I was really big into Greek and
Roman mythology.
And I said, why don't we name ourselves Orpheus right after the, I don't think he was a God,
(12:36):
I think he was immortal, but he played the lyre, you know, the little harp.
He went down to the underworld to bring his wife back.
He was kind of a symbolic of musicianship.
So we named ourselves the Orpheus Jazz Quartet.
And that was basically the name that stuck for the next couple of years.
That's fascinating.
I love that.
Yeah.
You ended up learning a lot about working as a team.
(12:57):
And so you ended up working at, was it Squire, I believe?
Yes, that's correct.
So immediately after law school, I joined one of the predecessor firms.
So it was Pat and Boggs at the time.
This was 2012.
And so two years after that, they went through the merger and became Squire Pat and Boggs.
And then you had transitioned over to Allen and Overie, which is where I met you.
(13:20):
I came over to practice or work on a team with international arbitration.
And you had been working in that field for a while as well.
Are you still working with international arbitration now?
I am.
Yeah.
One thing I really like about the field is that you can participate in a lot of different
ways.
You can engage in thought leadership.
You can work big cases.
(13:41):
You can work pieces of cases.
You and I, Kelby, have done some really large monster cases together.
Being in a boutique firm now, we do other things, but we can still do the award enforcement
actions.
It seems to me award enforcement, distinct from US court judgment enforcement, could
really be a field unto itself.
(14:01):
A lot of the award enforcement actions in district and circuit courts right now, similar
actions over in the UK, Switzerland being a big hub for or a seat of arbitrations, obviously,
then a hub for award enforcement.
You could make an entire legal practice out of enforcing awards.
So one of the things I didn't really understand back in the day, why do people pick international
(14:23):
arbitration as an option?
And one of those reasons is enforcement.
For law students who are listening right now, they may not have any ideas like, well, how
does that actually work?
How does a court enforce against, let's say, a sovereign or company that might not be in
the same jurisdiction?
What leads party to choose international arbitration is they might be coming from two different
(14:46):
jurisdictions, two different legal backgrounds.
They want a way to reconcile those differences and come up with a very neutral means of adjudicating
any dispute that might arise in the future.
Those incompatibilities in the background actually lead to a more direct, in theory,
means of enforcement later.
So we started a conversation.
I was talking about enforcing US federal or state court judgments.
(15:09):
So again, the onus is really on kind of the judgment holder to go out and do the work
to do that.
And it's actually counterintuitively for the students more difficult to enforce a foreign
judgment in the US than it is a foreign arbitral award.
So we have state statutes say, OK, we're going to recognize a Utah judgment in Virginia
(15:30):
as though it were a Virginia judgment.
It's never as direct for doing that on the international level.
In contrast, in international arbitration, we have the New York Convention, we have the
Panama Convention, we have the Exit Convention, where the US federal government has agreed
to enforce foreign arbitral awards as though they were domestic judgments.
(15:50):
So it's easier to enforce a foreign arbitral award because US courts do so as a matter
of federal treaty law, whereas enforcement of foreign judgments are governed by different
state level laws.
And governments just comply with this?
They're just like, sure, you can take me to court in US court.
That's fine and dandy for them because they signed these treaties.
I mean, when you sign the treaty, you don't ever expect to get to have an award rendered
(16:14):
against you someday.
But it never plays out that way, unfortunately.
So no, I mean, there is award enforcement is just as serious and big a deal as judgment
enforcement.
But the legal regime that governs it is, I think, a little bit clearer and a little more
direct.
And how does sovereign immunity, because I know that also plays a big role in your professional
(16:35):
life.
How does sovereign immunity comes into the matter?
You're right, Margarita.
It's a big part of my legal practice and actually something that's fascinated me since law schools.
I'm very glad to be working in this field.
Sovereign immunity is basically the theory that foreign states and their governments,
certain entities that fall within that umbrella have immunity in the courts of other states.
(16:58):
It operates on two realms, international sovereign immunity and the domestic law of sovereign
immunity, which is basically how we in the US or in other countries implement that international
principle.
In the US, we do it through the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, which governs the state itself,
certain state entities, state assets.
It doesn't embrace individuals.
(17:20):
It doesn't cover natural persons.
They have other bodies of immunity under different bodies of law.
But whenever a state is sued in US courts, there are very narrow jurisdictional bases
for that suit to proceed.
Otherwise, the US court doesn't have jurisdiction.
One of those narrow bases is in fact to enforce arbitral wards against the state that have
(17:41):
already been rendered or an agreement to arbitrate.
So we see this a little less frequently, although it certainly happens that you can compel a
state to arbitration if they've signed the agreement to arbitrate.
And the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act is meant to secure that right.
In the international sector, does it expand to the point where you're also dealing with
(18:02):
other areas of law when you're dealing with enforcement?
Does it ever go into other areas like white collar?
Or is it usually just kind of isolated in this kind of international sector?
No, I think there's a ton of overlap.
A lot of disputes start as white collar investigations.
They tend to sprawl in a bunch of different directions.
(18:22):
One big case I'm thinking of, I have not worked on it, but I've written a bit about it, was
the Malaysian Sovereign Wealth Fund.
So that, I guess, kind of spans the gamut.
There were white collar investigations, there were asset tracing, there were international
arbitrations that were downstream of kind of the initial wrongdoing.
It really kind of has spilled over into a lot of different areas of law.
(18:44):
It also involves sovereign immunity that we were talking about a moment ago.
In addition to the state itself, state assets and state property are afforded certain presumptive
immunities.
If you meet the jurisdictional criteria, you can proceed against those assets, but they're
very narrow.
Some categories of assets have a heightened level of protection afforded to them under
(19:05):
the domestic statute, and one of those is central bank assets.
One of the interesting emerging areas of law within sovereign immunity are sovereign wealth
funds.
So are they analogous to or functionally the same as central banks?
Are they different?
Are they independent commercial enterprises?
It really kind of depends on how the sovereign wealth fund is set up.
Certainly the state that owns it or manages their sovereign wealth fund wants to consider
(19:28):
it analogous to central bank assets that are basically untouchable.
Does someone have to be in Washington DC to work in this field?
No, but it helps.
Obviously, New York's the other big one too, just because it's the main financial center.
DC special, in addition to having all the embassies and missions here, it's basically
the default venue for suing a foreign state in the US.
(19:51):
I think the statute is 28 USC 1391, but I should look it up in case I'm wrong.
The venue statute specifies the district court for Washington DC.
If nowhere else, you can always sue a foreign sovereign here.
Certainly that makes it, in my view, the most important jurisdiction, but these suits can
arise anywhere.
There are very important sovereign immunity precedents from California, Houston, Miami,
(20:14):
anywhere that you'd expect to have international commerce in the US.
A suit could arise there.
So turning to, I guess, your average law student who's hearing about international arbitration
and your work with foreign sovereign immunities, any suggestions as to how somebody gets into
this area?
Yeah.
I mean, I think there are general suggestions that would apply to all the law students.
(20:35):
So I mean, read as much as you can, meet as many people as you can, write as much as you
can, participate in the community, is the advice that I give to law students and to
young lawyers.
You are at the precipice of a career that, God willing, will be many decades for you.
We are going to be colleagues in the same field, even if I or you or whoever is a little
(20:56):
bit older.
And so the advice I give to young lawyers is basically announce yourself as a member
of this field.
Obviously, you have to acknowledge and respect your elders.
I'm doing the air quotes right now.
But the people that have been working on it.
But at the end of the day, we are colleagues in the same field.
You should command respect.
And the way to do that is to get out there and actually be active.
(21:17):
More specifically, sovereign immunity is a fairly niche area of law.
But the DC District Court and Circuit Court are pumping out opinions left and right.
The Supreme Court pretty regularly rules on sovereign immunity, about two or three cases
every term.
It's a constantly evolving area of law.
(21:37):
But that's not the only one.
If you're doing cross border or white collar crime, if it's international competition law,
I mean, the best thing you can do is to get a good sense of the fundamentals because they're
cutting edge topics they're going to change as your career progresses.
Get familiar with issues.
The other side of the coin is don't feel like you have to master it all at the outset.
(21:58):
If someone came to me and said, Greg, I don't know anything about sovereign immunity.
You can have a very fulfilling and enriching career working in an international sphere
without necessarily litigating a foreign sovereign immunity dispute.
So don't despair if it seems like a lot to wrap your arms around.
Was this the area that you were targeting when you left law school?
Because you started with the death penalty cases and now you got into this area.
(22:22):
I'm not sure if there was a spark that brought you to this side.
It's a great question because I certainly did not expect my career to evolve in the
way it did.
In the JD program, I did not take any classes on international law at all.
That's one motivation I had for going back for an LLM degree years later to fill in the
gaps of my knowledge.
But I did take a class on conflicts of law, which I highly recommend if any students are
(22:45):
listening right now.
It was mostly domestic conflicts, but it talked about international conflicts as well.
And then with my favorite professor at Catholic, I took a class called national security law.
And we used a casebook, it was Bradley Goldsmith, it was actually called foreign relations law.
That had an aspect of international law in it, even though it wasn't the entirety of
it.
There's one module within that class on the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act.
(23:08):
So it was just one of many topics they covered.
But for whatever reason, it reached out and grabbed me and I said, Oh my god, this is
so cool.
And then, you know, you join a law firm, you do what they assign you to do.
And I didn't expect that years down the road, I would actually work on the subject that
really captivated me as a law student.
But the other bit of advice I would give is your career naturally evolves, ebbs and flows,
(23:31):
it takes you in different directions, you can guide it to a certain extent, but just
embrace the journey.
To go back to your question, Kelby, I did not expect to be doing this in law school,
I did the viz moot.
I did not expect to be practicing international arbitration just because I knew, certainly
commercial international arbitration just not as prominent in the US as it is elsewhere.
(23:51):
So very kind of serendipitous and very pleased that I was able to kind of take those subjects
and topics that I really loved in law school and later make a career out of them.
Do you come from a background of lawyers?
Because it sounds like you're immersed all over the world right now, it just sounds like
you have so much great knowledge.
Are you like a first gen lawyer?
(24:12):
Immersed all over the world is maybe a polite way of saying stretched thin.
But no, I am a first generation lawyer.
I guess the only lawyer I knew before I got to law school was a family friend from growing
up.
But he was a real estate transaction lawyer, fantastic guy.
He bought and sold farms all over Frederick County.
And certainly that was not a model for my career.
(24:33):
And at that point in my life, as we spoke about, I wasn't really thinking about it.
The decision to pursue a career in law basically made while I was working as a paralegal and
then going through the process and accumulating knowledge not just about the law itself, but
how the legal industry operates has been very eye opening.
And besides the law, international arbitration, sovereign immunity, your professional career,
(24:57):
writing as well, because you were telling us that you also write and publish.
What else do you like to do?
Like to recharge and spend your free time because you are constantly traveling, I guess.
It gets some tired sometimes, no?
It does.
And I think as I get on with my life, the importance of self care and balance has become
(25:18):
even more important because in your 20s and 30s, you can crank out the really long hours,
the jet lag, you can take it.
Jet lag is a very important point.
Exactly.
But you get a bit older and it takes more of a toll.
So I'm a big believer in self care, however you define it.
For me, I've always revisited the sound mind, sound body.
(25:40):
I try to be very active.
I try to spend as much time outside as possible.
I absolutely love hiking.
That is a pastime that's not always compatible with the practice of law.
Even, oh, I want to spend a summer there.
The reception is not great.
The reception is not great.
And in fact, years ago...
Sometimes that's okay.
That's better.
No, it's been, I guess, 2015, nearly a decade ago.
(26:03):
I did an amazing trip with a friend of mine.
So we went to the back country in Alaska and I guess it was about 10 days we were pack
rafting, which is you hike into really rough terrain.
You get to a river, you inflate the personal raft that you hiked in with and then float
on down the river.
So no reception.
I mean, 100 miles from the nearest human and I made expressly sure that I had permission
(26:27):
and no competing obligations.
But I sent like four or five reminders that I am not exaggerating when I say I won't have
any reception whatsoever.
A lot of times I don't even send an out of office message because I feel like no one's
going to care.
Yeah.
And you can't get away with that too often, which is why I say it's not always compatible
with a long-term career in law.
But for me, it gives a great sense of balance, again, kind of grew up in a more bucolic setting,
(26:53):
being in touch with nature.
It sounds a little woo, but it's true.
But this trip sounded really great.
So then you make it there and then you just float back down on your raft.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So we hiked for about three and a half days and we were carrying more than we should,
probably about 50 pounds of gear.
My friend, who's much more experienced in the back country than I was, he's like, I'm
(27:16):
bored with hiking so much.
There's no trail.
You're basically walking through marsh.
So a mile an hour, if you're lucky.
He said, I'm tired of walking.
Let's just put into the river a little earlier than we expected.
So we did, but we were very far up in Alaska, gates of the Arctic National Park.
So what would later become a massive river was still kind of a very fast, narrow moving
(27:39):
stream at that point.
So we put into the stream and just shot us down.
And it was really, I don't know how to describe it.
It's just very harrowing.
I ended up not capsizing, but kind of getting jammed up against the bank.
I had to step out into the water to kind of balance my raft and all my gear because obviously
if you lose it, you've got nothing.
(28:00):
So in doing that, I don't know, the air temperature must've been barely above freezing.
So I stepped up waist deep in the water for a couple of minutes, got back in and started
paddle and I said, Grant, I'm losing feeling, I think I'm having a serious hypothermia.
And just to say that there may not be good cell phone service here.
Yeah, literally medical.
(28:21):
So pulled over, built an emergency fire, got into the sleeping bag, warmed up for a little
bit.
So it was no joke, but great fun.
Again, an excellent counterpoint to spending most of the day in an office looking at a
computer.
Last thing I'll say is I've met other folks in this profession, some of whom are mutual
friends of ours that have really gotten into hiking and camping and realized what a phenomenal
(28:43):
experience it is.
I didn't grow up with it necessarily in the same way that I did.
And it's heartening to see people appreciate what a great experience it can be.
I love hiking, but I'll do it for like two or three hours.
Amazing.
Again, I can't do it as much anymore.
But you don't encounter bears or other wildlife or things like that?
No, I'll tell you a different story.
(29:03):
So during COVID, my brother and I did a cross country road trip.
We spent a lot of time in the mountain west where neither of us had been much before.
We were passing through the Big Sky town resort in Montana and said, oh, here's an interesting
day hike we can do in the morning.
We'll knock it out in the morning, three, four hours, then we'll drive the rest of the
day.
(29:25):
So you're in bear country.
It's very well posted.
It's very obvious.
And the responsible thing to do is carry bear spray with you or some means of protecting
yourself.
We're not going to see anything, we'll be fast, whatever.
So we get out there, we're some of the first people on the trail.
This particular trail we're doing was an out and back and we were a couple hundred yards
from the turnaround.
(29:45):
When we hear a crash in the woods, we look up and about 50 yards in front of us were
two very large brown bears.
My heart just stopped.
It's very scary.
My brother picked up a rock and I'm like, what are you going to do with that?
And fortunately, they kind of took off the other direction and they were more afraid
of us than we were them.
(30:05):
So we came back as we were going back to our car, we started passing, you know, other groups
of hikers are coming out for the day and we're like, oh, we saw a bear, we saw a bear.
That's okay.
We've got spray.
I'm like, ah, yes, the responsible.
If you're a beginner hiker and you want to go hiking around the DMV area, where can you
go?
Great question.
DC, believe it or not, is a great city for hiking.
(30:28):
So first I'd recommend just anywhere in Rock Creek Park, Rock Creek Park, distinct from
say Central Park in New York, splinters into all these different directions.
So for many years I lived in a neighborhood called Mount Pleasant.
So it's near Columbia Heights, right up 16th Street.
You could just walk out your back door across the street and there's a little path leading
into the woods.
(30:49):
Within two minutes, you're in the middle of the woods, no cars, no people, no houses.
It's really lovely.
That's a great place to start all these intersecting trails within the city.
Outside of the city, the really popular one is a trail called the Billy Goat Trail.
So that's over Carderock, Great Falls on the Maryland-Virginia border.
I don't know, maybe a 20, 25 minute drive west of the city.
(31:10):
It's short, but it's a lot of fun.
So you're kind of jumping over rocks like a Billy Goat.
Beautiful view of the Potomac River.
But no bears.
No bears, not yet.
And then kind of farther out, just a lot of really great smaller trails.
I was very fortunate.
Where I grew up in Frederick County, the Appalachian Trail ran right through my hometown.
Growing up, I could do Annapolis Rocks.
(31:30):
It was very close to my hometown.
It's a very popular day hike for folks that live in Baltimore, Washington.
Drive an hour.
It's actually a pretty popular rock climbing place too.
So looking at that, and obviously Virginia, just tons of opportunities.
Sounds nice.
I definitely need to try it.
I went to Great Falls once.
I love Great Falls.
I spent like 10 minutes jumping around rocks.
(31:53):
After 10 minutes, my legs were hurting.
So I definitely need to keep trying to see if I improve.
I once joined a dog group and we took our dogs to go hiking.
And we were going to the Shenandoah.
And we started hiking and hiking and all the dogs are just leaving.
It's the most wonderful, amazing thing when you just watch dogs being wild.
(32:17):
But no one told us that it was going to be a 10 mile hike.
We were just exhausted by the end of it.
But it's incredibly refreshing.
Last thing you're thinking about is that email that you haven't responded to or anything
like that.
So it's a great way to unwind and regroup.
Yeah.
And getting back to the heart of your question, I've always found it's a nice counterpoint
(32:38):
and I find it recharging, energizing, and ultimately makes me a better professional
too to give myself the opportunities to do something else.
I wish there was some kind of hiking group for the arbitration folk.
Maybe we'll start.
Oh my God, let's start it.
I do want to ask something else to you, Craig.
What advice would you give to people that are thinking about pursuing a career in the
(33:03):
legal field or in international arbitration?
Excellent question.
And I do feel that a lot.
As I alluded to earlier, I went back mid-career and did an LLM degree for several reasons.
And in the course of doing that degree, most of my classmates were foreign lawyers who
then became LLM students and wanted to break into the legal field in the US.
(33:25):
There were very few others like me who were US trained and educated lawyers that wanted
to do it for other reasons.
As I got back into practice, I speak to a lot of JD and LLM students just because I
bump into them at events.
So I have the opportunity to give this advice a lot and I really cherish it because a lot
of people more senior than me have helped me in my career and I like to give back to
them.
(33:46):
The most important thing is to not lose heart and not get discouraged, especially for foreign
qualified lawyers.
You get the degree, you've got the clock ticking, you've got a couple months to find a job,
it can be very, very stressful.
It can be very demoralizing.
The best advice I can give is to believe in yourself, don't lose heart, don't give up.
Even if it doesn't work out in this narrow window of opportunity, you are still a member
(34:09):
of this profession and our field and my colleague in the field.
And even if it didn't work out within these six months, there are still very meaningful
ways for you to launch or relaunch your career as the case may be.
So the most important advice is don't lose heart.
The other thing is, again, talk to as many people as possible.
I'm fairly introverted.
(34:30):
I don't go out of my way to meet new people.
I find it very challenging, so I have to force myself to do it.
Many others are not that way.
So very personality driven, love meeting new people.
The more people you can meet in the beginning or initial steps of your career, the more
it redounds your benefit later.
I saw that in the breach.
When I was a younger lawyer, I didn't do that.
(34:51):
As I progressed throughout my career, I said, I see these people popping up again and again.
If I had introduced myself earlier or formed a better bond, that would be helping me out
now.
Sometimes it can feel very transactional.
And I think that makes a lot of people, including myself, uncomfortable.
But it's not unnatural.
It's not bad.
Colleagues in the same field, you're going to see each other all the time.
(35:11):
You might be referring each other cases.
You might be referring each other work.
It's a perfectly natural thing to ask and give favors.
The way to do that is just going to the events, cold calling people, having coffees.
You don't need to have an ask.
You can just get to know people.
So that's the best advice.
I think it's really hard when you're introverted.
It's just like another coffee, another networking event, another like you're trying to break
(35:36):
a circle and introduce yourself.
People are coming to you randomly asking what you do.
It's not easy.
That is challenging for some people.
And it's something they don't really teach you at law school either.
Yeah.
And I think the best thing to do is give people grace.
I'm tired.
I worked all day.
I don't want to go to that happy hour, but I know I need to to meet people.
And you get there and maybe you're not as gregarious as you ought to be.
(35:58):
Or maybe someone thinks that guy's not very chatty.
And the important thing is to be understanding.
People are making an effort.
It's equally incumbent upon the other person to reach out.
Sometimes after a really great event, I want to get to a point where we formed a nice group
where we can get the after hour drinks, after the event drinks.
(36:20):
Then we can actually talk because then especially law students, they will actually start asking
you the real questions.
They're like what are our chances of getting a job in this industry or that industry?
Or they just want advice as to how they connect or make a connection because I'm sure, especially
these days, it must be kind of scary to realize how much competition there is out there and
(36:41):
perhaps not a lot of jobs.
Yeah I guess another bit of advice for students or younger attorneys is to pay attention to
the legal market, pay attention to trends in the industry, especially for people working
in DC.
Presidential administration, big initiatives in Congress, that will dictate a lot of the
work that's going to be coming in the next couple of years.
(37:02):
So in earlier parts of my career when I was job hunting, I would look at the listings
and there are certain fields that would pop up all the time, like antitrust lawyers are
always in high demand.
That'll be less the case if there's an administration that doesn't prioritize enforcement, but it's
such a specialized niche field that if I were a law student and I had even a little bit
of a quants background, I'd be like, oh my God, I should definitely be an antitrust lawyer.
(37:26):
That's not the only one, there are others too, but the more you kind of pay attention
to these trends and understand that enforcement matters and whatever area of law kind of ebb
and flow, if you pay attention to that, then you can make decisions that'll benefit your
career down the road.
Where do you see the international sector going?
Is AI going to be taking over?
(37:46):
Are we going to be entering new sectors and different things like that?
I know who I'm speaking to.
I'm very much a muddier.
I would love to practice law with a quill in ink, but I missed that train.
In the robe?
Yeah, exactly.
No, that's right up my alley.
So now I think AI is undoubtedly a major important force in the practice of law now and will
(38:08):
be so more in the future, especially for dispute resolution attorneys.
AI can never replace an attorney in the courtroom.
It can't replace an attorney before an arbitral tribunal, but it will absolutely assist those
legal teams.
It might replace some legal functions, but ultimately if your job is persuasion, a computer
(38:29):
program is not going to be the one to do that.
A human has to deliver that.
I agree.
I have to say I agree.
Well, thank you very much for coming and joining us and having our little discussion here.
It's great to see you, by the way.
You seem like you're way more refreshed than I've seen you in the past.
I've been hiking.
Yeah, that's really great.
So thank you very much again for joining us and we look forward to seeing where your career
(38:54):
takes you.
It's my pleasure.
Thank you both for having me.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Popular Podcasts
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.