Columbia graduates have found many routes to a rewarding career in business law. Below are the paths taken by alumni from the 1980s, 1990s, and very recently.
Alex Green '03
"I knew I wanted to pursue my interest in the airline industry, and Milbank is among the few firms that have separate transportation-industry departments. When I was a summer associate at Milbank, people recommended classes that I might want to take during my third year. Secured Transactions was very helpful, since most of my work today involves secured financing, and Bankruptcy, too, because airline deals are structured with the risk of bankruptcy in mind."
Asahi Pompey '97
"I did some very interesting work at Clearly Gottlieb—an oil-related project financing, a medical devices transaction, and a department store bankruptcy. But I realized that I wanted to be grounded in a particular industry. My advice to a student entering law school would be to ask yourself: What interests you? I took classes in corporate finance, corporations, securities, and mergers and acquisitions because I found them interesting, and they have also been useful in my work."
Charles Whitehead '86
"Two of my professors, Jack Coffee and Louis Lowenstein, focused on explaining how the financial and corporate markets work and, in turn, why and how they are regulated. Those classes were extremely valuable when, as a practicing lawyer a few years later, I began to wrestle with many of the same issues I had considered as a student. A principal asset of Columbia Law School is its cutting-edge faculty, who provide a real-world framework within which to study and understand the law."
1L Summer A letter to the general counsel of American Airlines yielded a summer internship on the corporate finance side of the airline's legal department.
1L Summer Human Rights Internship: Legal Resources Foundation (provided legal services to disadvantaged people in Zimbabwe)
2L Spring Advanced Corporate Law: Mergers & Acquisitions, Federal Income Taxation
2L Summer Summer associate at Clearly Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton
2L Fall Accounting for Lawyers, Corporations
2L Spring Securities and Capital Markets, Corporations
2L Summer Summer associate at Sullivan & Cromwell
3L Fall Business-law classes: Bankruptcy, Financial Statement Analysis, Secured Transactions, Law & Music Industry Editor-in-Chief: Journal of Asian Law
3L Spring Business-law classes: Antitrust & Trade Regulation, Corporate Taxation, Securities and Capital Markets
3L Fall Securities and Capital Markets, Counseling the Public Company
3L Fall Commercial Transactions, Securities Regulation
3L Summer Summer associate at Munger, Tolles & Olson, Los Angeles, and Sullivan & Cromwell, New York
2003-Present Associate in the Global Transportation Finance Department of Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy LLP
1997-2000 Associate, Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton Spent one year in Frankfurt, Germany, Office
1986-87 Clerk, Hon. Ellsworth A. Van Graafeiland, U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit
2000-02 U.S. counsel, The Economist
1987-92 Associate, Sullivan & Cromwell, New York, London, and Tokyo
2002-Present Corporate counsel, Pfizer
1992-97 Managing director and general counsel, Nomura Securities, New York
1997-99 Managing director and general counsel, Salomon Brothers, Tokyo (Salomon Brothers was acquired by Travelers Group, which became Citigroup)
1999-2004 Various senior positions with Citigroup Japan, including country officer and general counsel
2004-Present Research fellow, Columbia Law School Director, Transactional Studies Program Associate director, Center on Corporate Governance
