The Master of Laws Project, Strategic Listening, and Global Legal Careers with Yi Song

Welcome to Studying Law Around the World. I'm Claudio Claus. In each episode, I talk with lawyers, law students, and professors from different parts of the world to talk about legal education, careers, and what the profession looks like in real life. I talk about the hard parts, the surprises, and the decisions that shaped their paths. Whether you're planning to study abroad, thinking about working in another legal system, or just curious about how law works around the world, this podcast is for you. Today I have the privilege to receive Yi Song for another episode of the podcast. She has an incredible career at Georgetown and she's been practicing for many years at this point. And for those who may not know you yet, I'd love for you to introduce yourself and share a little bit of this journey that you took, you know, from China to Georgetown Law, private practice, and ultimately leading you to graduate in international programs at Georgetown. Well, first of all, thank you so much, Claudio, for having me on your podcast. I'm a fan. I've listened to all the episodes and I really enjoyed what you're doing, so keep doing what you're doing. Hello, everybody. My name is Yi Song. I work and teach at Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C. I teach internationally trained lawyers, legal research, and writing, and I'm an internationally trained lawyer myself working in the United States. I'm a lawyer from China. Before coming to Georgetown, I worked on tax law at PricewaterhouseCoopers. I can't believe that was almost 20 years ago when I first came to Georgetown as an exchange student at the university, and I later received my own LLM, Master of Laws degree from Georgetown Law. And after that, I practiced law in New York City for about five years, first in securities litigation, then on securities, I did some securities compliance work and in the immigration investment program. And I did several cross-country moves after New York. I think I was burned out after five years. That was good. I felt good. Then I moved to Seattle. I took on a in-house counsel job for a real estate development company. So I have lived in the Pacific Northwest in the United States, and I lived there for about four years. And before the COVID pandemic, I moved back to the East Coast and settled down in Washington, D.C. And I started teaching legal research and writing at Georgetown back in 2021. I can't believe that was almost five years ago, because this year, it was my five years anniversary and the university is sending me all these swags, you know, so I just can't believe how much time flies. And since 2022, I've been working at the graduate program of Georgetown Law School full-time. Fantastic. Thank you so much for making the time to share that. You do have an incredible project, and that is the Master of Laws interview project. And after, you know, experiencing firsthand how difficult it might be to find career information as someone coming from another country, I wanted to ask you a little more for you to tell us about your project, maybe what problems you're trying to solve, and what has surprised you the most since launching this project. Sure. Yes. Thank you for all the support that you gave to my Master of Laws interview project. I interviewed you several years ago and really enjoyed our conversation. So like you said, this project was born basically from my own work and interaction with my students, young lawyers with international background and who are trying to find internships, externships and jobs in the United States. And they asked me, how do you let your first job, how does the interview process go? What do I, what should I prepare? And so, and my own experience was kind of dated at the time. And so I thought, who are these people who are getting jobs now? I want to know what is the process now, has it ever seen change? Of course it has, it's a different world now. And so going in, I always know that for internationally trained lawyers, finding a job is a very individualized process, unlike our JD students, which has their OCIs and their, you know, timelines and they need to do certain things at a certain organized time. For internationally trained lawyers, because our students come with a great range of experiences. So we have students coming in with decades, more than a decade of experience. They have made partners in their firm at their home country and they're leading, they're running, some of them are running their own firms. So, and we also have new graduates who just graduated from their home country with their newly minted law degree. So I know just it is the nature of the job search. It is very individualized. And my interviews and my recent conversations with graduates and with people with more experience who found jobs recently, and by recently, I mean, see the last five years or so, you know, kind of confirmed that notion. Amazing. Thank you for sharing that. I wanted to ask you, at the same time, after interviewing so many lawyers in this path and following their careers, are there one or two qualities, habits, or decisions that you see constantly among those who go on to build successful careers? Yeah, these are great questions, by the way. So I think one thing that stands out is their interpersonal skills. They're people who are very easy to talk to, they're great storytellers, and they share their stories in an interesting way. And they focus their builder practice and they are relationship and development oriented. And they put time in self-growth and they put time in reaching out to their clients and their friends, their network, basically. And using the, you know, LinkedIn lingo these days, you know, they say, don't say networking, but say community building. So they're great community builders. That's one thing that does stand out. And I do ask them, for people who have international backgrounds, who found jobs recently, what is the one thing that students or young lawyers must do in school to increase their opportunities or their chances of getting hired, either for internships, short term, or a job, or something permanent? And they all say this one thing, you gotta, you know, reach out. This is not about locking yourself in a room and research and reading or writing and produce the best possible writing samples you can have, or just practice your spoken English with AI. You know, this is about putting yourself out there, go to all the networking events, attend panels, talk to people, and letting people know that you're looking. I think something that works, regardless of which jurisdiction you're trying to, you've worked as a lawyer, you just mentioned all of your roles throughout the U.S. and China as well. And you've worked, you know, as well as general counsel, as an educator, as a mentor. So when employers evaluate lawyers, specifically internationally trained lawyers, are there a few skills or qualities that you think that tend to matter most? And I think it's a two-part question. So from my own experience and my conversation with people in the hiring position, you know, managing partners, equity partners, who are trying to build their practice by bringing on more young professionals. You know, of course, it starts with the fundamental lawyering skills, research, reading, writing, communicating effectively. So when people who are in the hiring position, they feel like I can put this person comfortably before clients who are in crisis, basically, right? Because they come to us when clients are in pretty vulnerable positions. You know, a lot of our international lawyers, you know, lawyers with international background, they do business transactions. You know, they don't really, some of them practice white collar defense or international criminal law. You know, even they're in an even more vulnerable positions. But when you're dealing with parties in crisis, you know, there's a lot of skill sets that are required that essentially are not even legal. Of course, the foundation is legal. You got to know what you're talking about and to become their trusted advisors. But there's also whether you can communicate effectively, whether you can answer the client's worries. And, you know, I recently, I talked to one of my friends who just made equity partner at a big law firm. And he is one of the first with international background who has, you know, achieved so much. And I asked him, you know, when you're interviewing lawyers with international background like yourself, what exactly are you looking for? And he said this. So within a few minutes, he really wants to see who are the people who want the job versus who are the people who need the job. Because everybody want the job, right? For the prestige, you know, for a good compensation, for a good future, you know, good profession. But it makes a difference just from experience working with people. For people who really need the job, they over-deliver. You know, they put in 120% efforts. They make sure, you know, they deliver perfect projects and perfect work product. And it is especially important in age of AI, right? So a law school will teach this as well. We want students to be more skill-oriented, how to navigate this shifting dynamics when technology has become a big part of legal profession. And what can they do in law school just not to fall behind when everybody is jumping into the new technology? We want to make sure they have all the skill sets. So that's a mindset question, right? And for people who are putting in 80 to 100% efforts, maybe they will practice law for a few years and maybe they will switch to, I don't know, they may work for a hedge fund. You know, because the legal profession, it is serious and, you know, requires seriousness and hard work. It is never the kind of profession you can just wing it, right? At any stage of this profession, you need to put in a lot. And it makes you, you know, understand why lawyers are paid by the hour, because it is incredibly hard work that requires a lot of deep thinking for complex questions. Kind of hard to spot the issues all at once. You know, I have, you know, encountered issues such as this, that I feel like my brain just keeps working and keep thinking. And, you know, you have to force yourself to sit down just because how hard it is. But that's also the interesting thing, right? That's the first part of the question, what they're looking for. You want to make sure that you have built all your fundamental lawyering skills and give all that you have. And if you want to work in this position long term, right? And the second question, what do candidates overlook? I think that question kind of requires some experience. So I thought about when I was in law school and a young lawyer, I read this book by Cherie Blair. She's the wife of the former prime minister, Tony Blair, you know, in the UK. And both of them are lawyers. And she's a lawyer. And she said when she was a new lawyer, and it is a skill set to gain, I'm paraphrasing, of course, that it doesn't matter as much that you're the smartest person in the room, because when you are a student, you can just raise your hands, you know, all the answers, you pour it out at the right time. And then you got to plot it and you got to A, but in a workplace, then you got to listen and you got to find the right time to say the right things. And you got to read the room, basically, because for young lawyers, it is very hard sometimes to understand what exactly the client's after. You know, lawyers with less experience may think, oh, of course, the client wants to win, but not necessarily. Some clients, they don't, you know, they just want to move on with their business. They don't care if they're winning. They want to wrap it up, right? If it means more time, more energy, more money, maybe they don't want to win. They just want to wrap it up. So these are two different things. I think it's helpful going in as a young professional, just knowing this, just to be mindful about the shifting dynamics. The interview project has been going on for a few years now, and also you've built a career that spans through multiple jurisdictions, cultures. But when you look ahead, do you see a few opportunities emerging for lawyers who want to work across borders? And also, how do you think that these global legal careers might be changing now? Yeah, this is such a great question. For emerging fields, just speaking from personal experience, you know, in the past couple of years, I started doing expert witness work, which I found is intriguing. And it requires lawyers with international background because it is either in international business transactions or international litigation. So I think that's one of the perks of building the project. People found me on LinkedIn, and they knew that I had a background. I was a dual licensed attorney, which a lot of our students are, you know, they're multilingual and they're licensed to practice law in multiple jurisdictions. So if a client, they either are in litigation or they found a document in another legal culture or a language, they need interpretation. And if the court received one interpretation from one side and they want to know, is that what it means? What does it mean? What does it mean? And so I've been working on some of those cases, which I found is very interesting and it's a niche area. I guess it is also one of the perks that comes with aging, right? So in my 20s, nobody has ever asked me to be an expert witness, but now that I have. And so I've been, you know, enjoying working with that. I'm sure that there are other internationally trained lawyers that have been working on projects like that. I know some other internationally trained lawyers, they are mitigators and they are arbitrators. In international arbitration, there are a lot of requirements for, you know, you got to be multilingual and you have licenses in different jurisdictions. So that's the emerging area. And in terms of the changing, the ever-changing landscape of the global legal career, it, you know, I think despite the current disconcerting shift in current policies in certain countries, I think, you know, the trend, and I hope it's still that, you know, people are going to be doing business across borders. Of course, it's just because of the time changing, I will use examples between US and China, because that's the area that I know. So when I was in law school and graduating, there were a lot of big IPOs, like large scale IPOs in the New York Stock Exchange. And there will be prospectus being drafted and due diligence being conducted by multilingual lawyers and, you know, firms with multiple offices across the regions. And of course, once the companies are listed, there will be securities compliance work and securities fraud, securities enforcement work. And then during the COVID pandemic, there are the global supply chain issues. So there are companies in dispute, they're in international litigation. And now, because of the contentious US-China relations, and there are different, there are other kinds of cases like economic sanctions, investigations, focusing on other emerging areas like the, like the EV and AI and robotics. So it's all a trend, but no matter the trend, I think, just because how globalized our world is today, all the young people are on TikTok, you know, my cousins from China, from Malaysia, they're looking at the same things as my students in the United States. And, you know, all the boys are, they have the same haircut, which is an amazing trend. So it is a encouraging, you know, signal that the world global village is becoming smaller and smaller, hopefully to bring people together. And for people who wants to build global legal careers, just stay on top of things and watch for the trend and see if there's an entry point for you. That's amazing. Thank you so much for, for sharing those. I, I really liked the optimistic outlook then, especially when it comes to, to, you know, careers and opportunities and all of that. If you could go back to 2010, when you were, you know, completing your LLM, preparing for the New York bar, searching for your first opportunity. Yeah, this is another great question. And looking back, I think as a young professional back then, I used to have this dichotomy worldview, like seeing the world of people who have and who have not, you can fill the blank. People who have passed the bar, people who have not, people who have found the jobs, people who have not, people who have work visas versus people who don't. You know, it really requires, I guess, age is a plus in that regard. And it occurred to me that, you know, things are much more nuanced. I think when you see the world as the dichotomy, as it was, as I used to, it's kind of harder to form connection when you think about the world in such absolute terms. And you may ask, why does it matter? I think just from my work, interacting with young lawyers and my students, I think it does matter in the way that you present yourself in the interview and how you interact with your fellow classmates, your friends, or, you know, networking people. They're just friends that you made and friends you found. And so I think despite that people are from all kinds of cultural, socioeconomic, racial, political background, at the end of the day, as a young professional, they're all young people trying to find their place in the world. I think it's helpful to have that perspective going in when we tell students in such vague terms, just be yourself, like be confident at an interview, but how, right? I think have that understanding really help you, help you just give yourself grace, give other people more compassion and you're going to be fine. Thank you so much, once again, for making the time to come here and share these thoughts with us today. It's much, much appreciated. Thank you. I want to thank you for putting up with such great projects. You asked what I have learned and what the students have learned from your project and my project. I think one thing I would add is just that the existence of these people of international background, practicing law around the world, even if you walk away with nothing, just seeing them, hearing their voices matter. So thank you.