Patrick De: This podcast was made possible by the kind support of Guillen Charle and Charle Law, PLLC, a law firm representing clients in the negotiation of a wide range of financial trading agreements based in New York City.
Walter: In most cases, the issue is not the talent or the skill set. It is the opportunity. I once had one of my senior partners told me when I first started my practice that 80% of the lawyers can do the work, but only 10% of lawyers can attract the work.
Patrick De: That was Walter White, who as a young boy growing up in Wisconsin was pulled up on the knee of none other than Martin Luther King during a press conference. So began a passion for human rights that he maintained throughout an illustrious legal career that took him to Moscow, London, and into the paths of world leaders. Let’s hear his story and his ideas for how the legal profession can change.
Speaker C: Hello, I’m Patrick DeWitt, and this is 50 Faces Focus. In this series, we showcase the richness and diversity of inspiring people in the law. I’m joined today by Walter White, who’s had a fascinating legal career spanning over 35 years. Walter is an African-American international business and finance lawyer, most recently with the London office of McGuire Woods now retired and working on a number of projects. He is also a committed human rights advocate, an active participant in the American Bar Association’s section on individual rights and responsibilities, in recognition of which he received an award for distinguished service for providing leadership to the legal profession in protecting and advancing human rights, civil liberties, and social justice. Walter is from Wisconsin and from a family steeped in the fight for human rights and equality. As a 6-year-old child, he sat on the knee of Dr. Martin Luther King and was introduced to Thurgood Marshall and other civil rights leaders of the day. Unusually, in high school and later in college, he studied and became proficient in Russian. This was to play an important part in his life. His global career, both in his practice and as a government appointee, has spanned the United States, Russia, Central Asia, and now the UK. We hope in this discussion to cover as many facets as possible of his interesting and well-lived life. Welcome, Walter. Thank you for joining me today.
Walter: Thank you very much. It’s a pleasure.
Speaker C: First of all, I’d like to talk a little bit about your family background and your upbringing. You were brought up in an African-American family in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a very illustrious family by all accounts. Can you give us some idea of your childhood and what it was like growing up?
Walter: Well, my father was a dentist and my mother was a biologist. After a few years, well, after her third child, she stopped working. We lived in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. We lived in quite a middle-class Black integrated community until, until my sister was going to high school. And she had been advanced in grade 7 to grade 8, and then they were going to advance her again. And my father said, there’s no sense in my daughter thinking that she’s the brightest person in the world. And they looked for another school system, and we moved out to an interesting suburb known as Mequon, Wisconsin. And that’s where we completed high school before we went off to college. And it was a beautiful area. We lived on several acres in the woods with few neighbors, we could ice skate from the stream that ran across our front yard down to the Milwaukee River, which is about a 3/4 of a mile ice skating route. And then we could skate or snowmobile up and down the river as long as as long as we, we could until we ran into dams and things like that. In grade school, I was one of 3 Black children in my class, and that remained that way mostly through high school as well. When we were in high school, a high school of 1,200 people had at one point, I think, 7 Blacks, 3 of whom I was related to. Yeah, so it um, it was, was a difficult environment for us. That being said, we, we moved into the community fairly well. We were active, we were mostly academically successful. The neighbors that we did have didn’t necessarily take to our move into Mequon particularly well. We had— we were not permitted to use the telephone because of the number of vicious calls that the house would get.
Speaker C: Really?
Walter: That wasn’t a serious problem for me because I was probably 9 at the time. It was a much more serious problem for my older sister who, of course, spent, like a teenager does, her life on the telephone with her friends. But ultimately we got a private additional line which was largely used by, I would say, the children, but really it was by my sister and then later my younger sister.
Speaker C: That’s great. Your family were activists in equality and human rights issues.
Walter: Oh yes, we had a long tradition going back to my, my mother’s parents primarily. My grandfather was an avid civil rights activist, particularly focusing on education, but not exclusively. My mother was active with the League of Women Voters and the NAACP. And of course, there were rules in many parts, including the area that we were in, that forbade Blacks, often Jews, and others to purchase housing. And we circumvented that because the woman from whom we bought our home was a friend. And so she— when my parents called her to say we’re looking for places with good schools. She said, well, as it happens, I’m about to sell my house and move to England.
Speaker C: Oh really?
Walter: Yes. And so we were able to buy her house directly without, without much noise or activity.
Speaker C: Yes.
Walter: It was only after we moved that certain neighbors became concerned. That being said, in general, we had tremendous support from the community in Macon, and we were very active and in the high school activities.
Speaker C: And did you experience any direct discrimination yourself on account of your color?
Walter: Well, regularly. If I had— when I was older, if I had friends driving out to visit us, they would routinely be stopped by the police.
Speaker C: Yes.
Walter: It wasn’t so much a factor that affected me because, of course, I was recognized and my family was known. And there were, know, there you was what I would call a constant series of microaggressions. But having said that, were— we I was active in debate and forensics and was quite successful in those environments. And I was elected president of my high school class. Yes. So there were things that, that counterbalanced this. My sister was a tremendously successful perhaps the most successful actress and singer of the time. Yes. In the high school. And she went off to do drama at Harvard and various other places and ended up as a television producer in Hollywood. So my younger sister survived all of that. My brother had more difficulty. And so he was sent away to a prep school in the East. And then partially because he loved to ski, went out to Colorado, Colorado Rocky Mountain School before going to college.
Speaker C: So you’ve all been very successful. Can you tell us about how you met Martin Luther King? What was the— what were the circumstances?
Walter: I would say that we’ve all had a few good moments. Well, my parents were active with the NAACP and with the Urban League.. And during the late— I think it was the late ’50s, it may have been the early ’60s— it was customary for people like Martin Luther King and Thurgood Marshall and others who were active to come to the annual gala dinners and things that were hosted by those organizations. And they were largely fundraising activities for the civil rights movement. And Yes, because I um, I was, because was with my mother when Martin Luther King came to town. I met him behind the stage, and I don’t know, I was probably 5 or 6, and he literally picked me up and sat me on his lap as he did his press conference.
Speaker C: Do you have pictures of it?
Walter: I do not have pictures. Unfortunately, yes, there may have been pictures somewhere But the many, many years later, when my mother was elderly, we had a flood at the house and a lot of the original family documentation got destroyed, particularly a lot of my grandfather’s letters and things.
Speaker C: Oh, what a pity.
Walter: Yeah, they they were, were in the basement in boxes and they were just destroyed by the flood.
Speaker C: And did you always want to do law? With the debating at high school?
Walter: When I was young, my family fed me— I was an avid reader, and my family fed me books about the trials and tribulations of Thurgood Marshall and others. And so I grew up with a strong sense of justice and the battle for civil rights. When I got to high school, I was studying the Russian language. And I got immersed in Russian literature and loved the world of Pushkin and Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. And so when I went to college, I continued to study Russian. And I was just stubborn. I didn’t feel I’d learned it adequately in high school, and I wanted to learn it.
Patrick De: Yeah.
Walter: And in high school, they encouraged me to go to Russia because because they said I understood the fundamentals of the language, but I needed a lot of practice. And so I went to Russia in my freshman year for a while, and then I went back to study Russian later. And along the way, I was really a political science major, but I realized in my junior year that I had virtually satisfied the Russian, or the Russian studies major as well, and so I finished with both. When I graduated, it was during the post-Nixon era, and the only people who were really interested in Russian students of the quality that I was were the intelligence services. I didn’t— I wasn’t under any illusions that I would have a strong enough Russian language ability to say do graduate work in Russia. Yes, in Russian. And so in thinking about what to do next, I, like so many people, applied to law schools, right? That was not inconsistent with my interests. And so I went to law school. When I finished law school, nobody was interested in a Russian-speaking lawyer in the United States, so I went into corporate law.
Speaker C: You had had to, you to shelve the Russian temporarily. What made you interested in Russian in the first place?
Walter: My mother encouraged me. My sister studied Russian.
Speaker C: Oh, really?
Walter: I I think, think that my older sister Winifred studied Russian. I think, in fact, I took a look at the language options, which were pretty good at my high school, a choice of Spanish, French, Latin, Russian. I don’t remember, German might have been an option. But to me, Russian sounded most interesting. I was just studying the language because largely the literature hooked me.
Speaker C: Yes, yes. So it came into your life later on, but let’s go back then. So you graduated from the School of Law in Berkeley.
Walter: Yes.
Speaker C: And then you went into private practice?
Walter: I joined a firm called Michael Bussin Friedrich in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I kind of looked nationally and was trying to head to New York because I was interested in international practice.
Speaker C: Yes.
Walter: But none of the international firms in New York were really doing law with Russia either.
Speaker C: Yes.
Walter: And so the Milwaukee firms were competitive, and they of course showed a greater interest. And so I, I I joined, joined a firm in Milwaukee.
Speaker C: And were there many people of your own background in that firm?
Walter: Well, if you mean, were there many people of color in the firm? You know, in fact, there were not many people of color in what I would call the big law corporate community. Yes, I think I was the third or the fourth. Yes, in the state as an associate in a major firm. There were some extraordinary lawyers who became friends of mine over time. Yes, reporter at Foley Lardner and John Daniels at Quarles Brady. John actually ended up being the managing partner of the Quarles firm. Yes. And Richard was a classmate of Hillary and Bill Clinton from Yale, and he was, I believe, the first Black partner in a major firm in Wisconsin.
Speaker C: Oh, really? Yes.
Walter: Yeah.
Speaker C: And you got support then from some of the other Black lawyers in the area? Were they supportive?
Walter: They were tremendously supportive.
Speaker C: Yes.
Walter: They gave me extraordinary guidance, and, and they had good wisdom.
Speaker C: And did you experience any particular obstacles then due to your color in your work?
Walter: Not within the firm, no. The firm had to talk its way through, um, hiring a Black lawyer, but they did that with relatively low noise. Um, I— we became I became an associate.
Speaker C: I in it.
Walter: I.
Speaker C: Was.
Walter: Had a significant profile in the firm and in the state. And I have no serious, serious regrets about that. In fact, I thank them tremendously for the opportunity. Yeah. We— I did have clients who said and did weird things. I had a client who I was having lunch with who said, I can remember when we didn’t have racial problems in this country.
Speaker C: Oh, really?
Walter: To which my, um, my partner who was with us said, well, I’m not sure exactly when that was. But for the most part, the firm gave me a nice platform to do the sorts of things that I wanted to do.
Speaker C: Yes. And what type of law was that that you were doing?
Walter: Well, my background at the time, for the first 7 years of my practice, was largely corporate officing, corporate offering, mergers and acquisitions, with a fair amount of litigation, commercial and corporate litigation, usually related to financial regulation or corporate activity.
Speaker C: And you’ve stayed throughout your career in the corporate area in general, would that be correct?
Walter: Yes, absolutely. When I was there, I did some work, some international work, international arbitration work as well. But then, then the Soviet Union began to change in 1985.
Speaker C: Yes.
Walter: I had been practicing for 5 years at that point. I had also been active with bar associations both locally and nationally, and I was very active with the American Bar Association, and I was very active with the international activities of the American Bar Association. Yes. So when perestroika and glasnost began to come about during 1985. The American Bar Association reached out to the Russian legal community and to the Soviet Union and began to talk about creating an independent judiciary and an independent bar and talk about human rights issues.
Speaker C: Yes.
Walter: As one of my friends who was in the association, when, when this began, I basically said I would like to be involved, and she said, get off your knees, we’re happy to have you.
Speaker C: So that was a perfect storm then for you, really, wasn’t it? With your Russian and with being involved in the ABA and with the perestroika, it all came together.
Walter: It did. At that time, it was all voluntary, but that was fine with me. We had a foresighted governor, his name was Tommy Thompson, and he gave me the opportunity to become Commissioner of Securities for the state of Wisconsin.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Walter: And that was consistent with my interests. But one of my— my only criteria for doing that was that he would permit me to continue to do the work that I was doing with the Bar Association and with Russia. Yes. And he agreed to that wholeheartedly. So while I was trying to help regulate the financial industry just after the crash in 1987, October of 1987. I also was running back and forth to the Soviet Union, then Soviet Union, on judicial exchanges and lawyers exchanges and lecturing on human rights and lecturing on the development of the securities market and corporate activities. In the Soviet Union.
Speaker C: And you were working two full-time jobs essentially at that point.
Walter: Well, I am one of these people who always considered the bar-related work to be a part of your job.
Speaker C: Yes.
Walter: And it is significant that, that as Commissioner of Securities, I did not have to keep billable hours, so the, the productivity level was less of a burden for me. And of course, I had a very good staff And so I could focus on the things that they needed me for, as opposed to all aspects of the day-to-day operations of the agency.
Speaker C: And how did you find Russia during that period?
Walter: Well, Russia was moving rapidly from the time when I first went, which was 1973, and it was dynamic, I think, is the way to describe it.
Speaker C: Yes.
Walter: You know, I met brilliant Russian lawyers. We had a program called the Soviet Lawyer Internship Program where we would bring lawyers to the United States. The American Bar Association would bring lawyers to the United States and they would work as interns and they would work in a variety of different places around the country. By having the opportunity to interview almost 200 Russian lawyers a year from all sectors of Russian society, yes, we got a very good understanding of what was going on in the country. Yes, it was exciting, which I got.
Speaker C: To what the public reports were.
Walter: Yes, I mean, we, we got a lawyer’s perspective, and as lawyers are involved in just about everything, you know, we spoke with defense lawyers and prosecutors, we spoke to lawyers who represented unions, lawyers who represented large state corporations, we spoke with lawyers who represented international corporations. We spoke with lawyers who were counsel to city and state organizations. So we had a very good insight into the activities of— that were going on in the country and the transition. We spoke with young lawyers who were politicians who were trying to drive change in the country. And of course, we also had the opportunity to travel to places like Armenia and discuss the situations in Armenia and go to Karabakh and the Kichivan.
Speaker C: Yes.
Walter: And hear from people who were frightened of the transitions.
Speaker C: Yes.
Walter: It was was a, it a dynamic time and very educational for me.
Speaker C: Yes. And what was it fragile at that time, the perestroika, early on?
Walter: The only way to answer that is to say yes.
Speaker C: Yes.
Walter: So it’s not necessarily apparent And of course, they’re at different times. We had pre-notice that people were going to try to— well, literally, a mayor, a deputy mayor named Stakhanovich, Sergei Stakhanovich, told us that they were going to take away the power from the Communist Party, which of course to us was unbelievable. And, um, you know, ultimately they closed the Soviet Union. Yes. And I was fortunate enough to be in the Kremlin on the day that they lowered the flag of the Soviet Union and raised the flag of the Russian Federation. That was a historic moment. Yes, tremendously historic and quite extraordinary. I never actually dreamed that I would be able to be a participant/witness of yes, changes of this magnitude.
Speaker C: Do you still get a tingle in your spine when you think of it?
Walter: I do, yes, but that’s also long past. Yes, um, the— in addition to the impact of the transition, there was an age of hope. Yes, expectation. And we anticipated that the Russian Federation and the neighboring republics would grow into an environment of a new dynamism and freedom and open private economic activity.
Speaker C: Yes.
Walter: And I moved to the Russian Federation in 1994 with some of those expectations and worked with lawyers who were doing some of that activity, and we, we helped build major public corporations and We did the first offering of Lukoil, for example, and many others. Of course, all of the enthusiasm that we carried into the country and the enthusiasm that was shared by many of the people with whom we worked was gradually shattered as Yeltsin evolved into Putin and the country became, well, what is an oligopoly.
Speaker C: And do you think that the Western expectations around that time were somewhat naive now in retrospect?
Walter: I think it’s fair to say that my expectations were naive.
Speaker C: Really? Yes.
Walter: There are always people who, who never thought that the transition was going to take place.
Speaker C: Yes.
Walter: Even I was aware of the challenges that the transition faced. What I was not aware of was how quickly and effectively corruption would manifest itself. Yes.. But I look back at the last few years that we’ve had in the United States, and I see a parallel as to how quickly it can happen.
Speaker C: Yes, indeed. Yes. And you met Gorbachev?
Walter: I did. And working with the American Bar Association, he was involved.
Speaker C: And did you like living in Russia?
Walter: I did. In many ways, it was among the high point of my years of practice. My family did not. It was very difficult for them. They had moved from a comfortable U.S. Environment, community, to a place where they lacked the friends, they lacked the language access. My wife, whose family— she was Jewish, was from Lithuania and Ukraine— was always skeptical of the idea of moving back to the Russian Federation.
Speaker C: Yes.
Walter: Yeah. She had a bit of a— Her view was, my family left this country for a reason, and I’m not sure that it’s wise to go back.
Speaker C: Yes.
Walter: And there were very difficult aspects of it.
Speaker C: Yes.
Walter: It was in many ways a crude and even cruel country. The first night that I left to go visit our office in Kazakhstan, a bomb went off in the building. That we had our apartment.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Walter: Now the building was a full block long and— or a full block square. And so the bomb was a block away from where we lived. But the newspapers reported that the bomb was set by the Armenian fruit mafia to blow up a building that licensed fruit kiosks on the street, or blow up an office that licensed fruit kiosks on the street.
Speaker C: Yes.
Walter: I have no idea whether or not that’s true, But what I do know was the first time that I left my family alone in Moscow, a bomb went off in the building that we were in. And my wife, who said, “I didn’t know who to call.”.
Speaker C: Yes.
Walter: “I didn’t have the numbers of the right people. I couldn’t speak to the police or the authorities. I knew that it was a bomb, but I just convinced myself that it was a snowplow.” So there is no minimizing the impact that it had on them. There were tremendous challenges. The reason that we moved from Russia was that my son was sledding one day and hit a major hill near Moscow University, and he fractured his skull. He hit a post. I took him to the American medical clinic, and they basically told him— told me that there was nothing that they could do for him. That I considered to be an unacceptable answer, so I called my brother-in-law, who’s the head of emergency medicine, or with the emergency medical faculty of Northwestern University Hospital in Chicago, and he told me I needed a neurosurgeon and a pediatric neurosurgeon, and I needed them right right away.
Speaker C: Yes.
Walter: So I called our security people and they identified Moscow’s leading neurosurgeon and pediatric neurosurgeon, literally sent cars to pick them up and opened a clinic in Moscow, the leading neurological neurosurgery clinic. And they worked on my son for many hours and It was horrific, the sort of worst experience that an expatriate in a difficult country could— I can imagine, I think. Yes. The— I got tremendous support from my people, and they came down prepared to purchase the clinic. Yeah. But my son was fine. They did a tremendous job, and shortly thereafter we flew him to the Great Ormond Street Hospital, which is the leading pediatric neuro facility in the UK.
Speaker C: Yes.
Walter: The Russians referred us to specific physicians. They checked him out and said that my son had been very well cared for, perhaps better cared for than they could have done in the UK.
Speaker C: Yes.
Walter: And he, of course, is doing fine. He is now a professor or assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University. And it was traumatic, and I was not seriously able to ask my family to move back to Moscow. Yes, yes. Even though it worked out, yeah, finish his semester and then we moved to the UK.
Speaker C: So even though it worked out, um, all right in the end, the process was too scary and too and too unpredictable. Was that your thinking?
Walter: Accidents can happen anywhere.
Speaker C: Yes.
Walter: But the access to facilities is taken for granted in the West. And, um, we have high expectations. And the— it was the view of my now ex-wife that I was gambling with the family’s health.
Speaker C: Okay, yes, yes.
Walter: And I was not prepared to continue that or do that again to the same extent.
Speaker C: Yes. And did that close the Russian chapter in your life then?
Walter: Well, it was a transition.
Speaker C: Can I ask you about another part of your life’s work, human rights? That’s been a major, really important aspect of your devotion, dedication over the years. Um, can you tell me a bit about your human rights involvement?
Walter: Given my family history and the nature of activities in the United States, it is inconceivable for me to be a lawyer and not include as an element of my life the fight for justice. And because my firms were less interested in that, some of the firms that I’ve worked with have been extremely conservative. For example, my first firm did not permit me to represent the NAACP in school desegregation cases, which I had the opportunity to do. I, I found that the Bar Association was a way to, to permit me to continue my advocacy, and in that capacity, I worked with the Milwaukee, Wisconsin Young Lawyers Association I worked with the State Bar and I worked with the American Bar Association. And I was privileged to have some leadership positions, several leadership positions in the American Bar Association. And bar associations set policy and they advocate positions. We were very effective in areas relating to reproductive rights. We were effective at the time in areas relating to voting. We were effective in deconstructing discriminatory activities in many corporate environments, and we were active in the areas of breaking down discrimination within within the, the practice of the law, including setting judicial ethics standards and legal standards in relationship to discrimination. And we also advocated policies nationally and internationally in relationship to human rights. And I was fortunate to chair the section on civil rights and social justice, and I was fortunate to chair the Center on Human Rights, which focuses extensively on protecting lawyers who are being shut down by governments while advocating on behalf of human rights defendants, usually.
Speaker C: Yes.
Walter: We also worked years ago when I was involved with the, the African Rule of Law Initiative on anti-trafficking initiatives in Eastern Africa. There were many tremendous opportunities to provide leadership and contributions to the development of human rights, including working with the United Nations.
Speaker C: And what do you think of the state of human rights in the world today?
Walter: It is a complex question and it’s probably related to a particular country or a particular region. During the Obama administration, we made tremendous progress, in my opinion, in relationship to commitments of, for example, the G20 to elimination of poverty. To protection of the rights of women. CEDAW, the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women and Violence Against Women, is one of the things that the American Bar Association led the United States to adopt, um, in the United Nations. There’s a UN convention. So we had many successes. We’ve also had many failures. The Trump administration has largely backed away from the leadership of the United States and the development and protection of human rights. The Biden administration has signaled significant return to American traditions. And we also have had a substantial breakdown of the democratic structures in the United And that hopefully we are turning around with the Biden administration as well. So it’s difficult. The life and participation in democratic activities is way too difficult in today’s world. And there’s a tremendous amount of work to do.
Speaker C: And you say that there’s been a big setback throughout the Trump administration with respect to voting rights and equality, and will that take long to undo?
Walter: It’s taken 300-plus years, um, so far. I expect that in the event that the Congress is able to pass the John Lewis bill, even something stronger than the, the Voting Rights Act, then that will make substantial changes in the United States. However, what is very clear right now is that Republican legislatures around the country are imposing substantial restrictions to voting in the United States, and voter suppression is probably at an all-time high. At least the effort is probably at an all-time high. And that’s saying an awful lot because when you look back to the Jim Crow eras, And I suppose back to the time when the Constitution was passed and people of color were considered 3/5 persons, I suppose it’s inappropriate for me to say it is at an all-time high, but there is certainly an effort to maintain that tradition in the United States, and that needs to change.
Speaker C: And your own grandfather’s vote was suppressed. Is that right?
Walter: Oh, everybody in my family’s generations before have been suppressed. My grandfather told us tales about about the, the tests. He was a brilliant man, as I mentioned, an early Amherst graduate, attended Harvard and did further work at the University of Indiana. He had a minor in Latin when he graduated from Amherst. So that when he went to vote, they would offer him something in French and say, can you read this? And of course, with the Latin background, he could understand what the French said quite easily. And then they’d offer something— offer him something in another language, and he you would, know, do the same. And they would start by offering him something in English, say, can you read this? Of course he could read this. Then in French, and then finally they would offer him something in Chinese, and he would say, “Well, I guess it says that I don’t get to vote.” But he was a tremendously proud man. He was a large man, and he had a very dry wit, and he did not accept discrimination lightly.
Speaker C: Can I ask you then about the current state of gender and racial representation within the legal profession?
Walter: Well, it remains terrible. It is better than it was perhaps when I began my practice. There are a lot of initiatives by major corporations to require diverse legal teams on the, on the groups that service their work. And this is helpful, but it hasn’t been as effective as we would have liked. The numbers are still very low in relationship to, um, number of women partners, the number of partners of color, even though the numbers in the schools, the law schools, graduating from law schools, and have improved significantly, though I have to confess they’ve gone up and down as there have been challenges against affirmative action. I don’t know how to make that change in the United States. One of the ways to make a change is, of course, the new Biden administration has the most diverse cabinet in the history of the United States. That, in addition to many other things, and in fact one of the least significant reflections of that activity, is that it develops talent. And that talent will go out and develop other talent. I am pleased to say over the many years of my practice, I have had the privilege of developing many women and women of color and young lawyers of color. When you have a position in leadership in the profession, you attract others.. And many of them have gone on to develop very successful careers. In the UK, you have a bifurcated system. You have solicitors and you have barristers. And the solicitors essentially hire the barristers. The barrister ranks are relatively low in terms of diversity outside of certain particular areas of practice, like the criminal practice representing the impoverished communities. But if you look to the leading commercial chambers, the numbers are quite low. And over the years, I spent scores of millions of pounds on barristers, and I realized that if I had insisted that we develop key barristers, particularly juniors, I could have developed I could have grown, um, several QCs. Yes, over the last 20, 25 years of my practice in the UK. Now, if my firm made a commitment to that, because of course the scores of millions of pounds that I spent was only a portion of that spent on litigation by my firm, yes, then we could have doubled or tripled that number. And if the leading partners of color in London made those commitments in the leading firms, then the number is probably tenfold. And if 5 leading firms, um, say the Magic Circle firms, made a similar commitment, then the bar would be diversified in 10 or 15 years. There would be scores of QCs of color, because in most cases the issue is not the talent or the skill set, it is the opportunity. I once had one of my senior partners told me when I first started my practice that 80% of the lawyers can do the work, but only 10% of lawyers can attract the work.
Speaker C: Yes.
Walter: And if you take, you know, young people admitted to the bar and you train them, you have— and you train them with first-rate organizations like the Global 100 law firms who all have offices in the UK, then you give them extraordinary training and they will become the next era or class of potential QCs.
Speaker C: Is there a practical way then to develop that idea that you have?
Walter: Well, I suppose to call the firms together and say this is a priority. And can you do that? Some of them will buy into it.
Speaker C: Yes. Are you in a position to do that now? You’re retired from active practice now, is that correct?
Walter: Not with the same level of influence that I had when I was in but, practice, um, but I may know a few people.
Speaker C: And, and you’re hopeful to develop that idea then in a practical way?
Walter: Let’s see, I’ll, I’ll I’ll raise, raise the issue with a few people who are better positioned to do it than I am.
Speaker C: Well, that’s great. And just by the way, why do you think that is the case, that the barristers have less representation from from minorities and women rather than the solicitor?
Walter: Well, I don’t think the barristers have less representation than solicitors. I think they both have a paucity of diversity.
Speaker C: Yes.
Walter: I think the barristers are more under the control of the solicitor community. And it does not take the entire solicitor community to make that impact or make that difference. It takes a core, and it seems to me that can and should be done. All of the major firms have suggested that they have a commitment to diversity, and so let’s put them to the challenge.
Speaker C: Yes. So we’re approaching the end of the interview now. I might ask you one or two quickfire questions. Do you have any overriding sort of motto or creed that you live by?
Walter: A couple of things come to mind. The first that I have advised to young lawyers is at all costs protect your integrity.
Speaker C: Yes.
Walter: And this is a challenge, particularly relationship to the second issue, which is young people going into the profession often think that they have succeeded by getting access to the profession. And in my experience, it’s not so much that you achieve the point where you are— the point where you are a success as much as your successes prepare you to take on greater challenges.
Speaker C: Yes.
Walter: And the, the way you handle the greater challenges determines whether you reach another level of success.
Speaker C: It’s it’s a— an incremental thing.
Walter: Yes. It’s not an easy profession. And I, in my experience, took on a few extraordinary challenges: trying to change the nature of the financial hierarchy of South Africa at the end of the apartheid days, immediately after the end of the apartheid days, and changing the nature of the Russian Federation battling battles in the 5 countries of Central Asia. Those were unusual stretches.
Speaker C: Yes, indeed.
Walter: And, and I’ve had some great successes, and I’ve had some extraordinary failures. But along the way, I’ve had many great moments. When 9/11 happened, it was a tremendous shock to those of us in the legal community. I was here in London at the time. But we lost people, um, people who were working in the towers and people who were affected by the collapse of the towers. New York basically shut down, and it shut down for a week. The markets closed. And in the firm that I was in, there was a tremendous amount of email traffic about how it was affecting everybody and how much of a tragedy the incident was. And as we were all grieving, if that’s the proper term, we got a message from our managing partner who appreciated and acknowledged all of the pain that the lawyers in the firm were going through, but he recognized that the pain the clients were going through was greater. And the clients needed advice and they needed it now. And it was a reminder that as a lawyer, your client needs you when your client needs you and you need to be available for them to respond. And that was a lesson to me. It was fundamentally understood, but I never understood it with quite the sheer profundity as in that circumstance. That even though it was a difficult time for all of us, that you had to rise above the pain and serve the needs of the clients who were in desperate situations.
Speaker C: And that was the lesson you learned about that time, and that’s the advice you would give to your younger self?
Walter: It’s certainly one of the key pieces of advice. And it’s the nature of the legal profession. Historically, the lawyers don’t solicit work. Clients come to the lawyers when they are needed.
Speaker C: How are you spending your time at the moment?
Walter: Oh, I’m trying to be an investor. In some things on the continent of Africa and trying to put together a portfolio, a private portfolio with a few other individuals.
Speaker C: Very interesting. What are your hobbies and interests?
Walter: Well, I enjoy golf and I enjoy bicycling. I play a lot of chess when I get the opportunity. And of course, I’m at a point in life where my goal is to and experience family as much as they’ll permit me the opportunity to do so.
Speaker C: I want to thank you very much, Walter. It’s been a pleasure speaking with you today. And thank you for sharing your history and your insights with us. You’ve had a wonderful life. You’ll have a lot more years of wonderful life, I’m sure. You’ll be a total success in the investment world. And you might shake up some other countries in the world that need shaking up before you call it a day.
Walter: Thank you very much, and thank you for the opportunity.
Speaker C: Thanks again.
Walter: Take care.
Speaker C: I’m Patrick Devlin. Thank you for listening to our 50 Faces Focus series. If you liked what you heard and would like to tune in to hear more inspiring lawyers and their stories, please subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Patrick De: This podcast is for information only. Only and should not be construed as investment or legal advice. All views are personal and should not be attributed to the organizations of the host or any guest.
Patrick De: This podcast was made possible by the kind support of Guillen Charle and Charle Law, PLLC, a law firm representing clients in the negotiation of a wide range of financial trading agreements based in New York City.
Walter: In most cases, the issue is not the talent or the skill set. It is the opportunity. I once had one of my senior partners told me when I first started my practice that 80% of the lawyers can do the work, but only 10% of lawyers can attract the work.
Patrick De: That was Walter White, who as a young boy growing up in Wisconsin was pulled up on the knee of none other than Martin Luther King during a press conference. So began a passion for human rights that he maintained throughout an illustrious legal career that took him to Moscow, London, and into the paths of world leaders. Let’s hear his story and his ideas for how the legal profession can change.
Speaker C: Hello, I’m Patrick DeWitt, and this is 50 Faces Focus. In this series, we showcase the richness and diversity of inspiring people in the law. I’m joined today by Walter White, who’s had a fascinating legal career spanning over 35 years. Walter is an African-American international business and finance lawyer, most recently with the London office of McGuire Woods now retired and working on a number of projects. He is also a committed human rights advocate, an active participant in the American Bar Association’s section on individual rights and responsibilities, in recognition of which he received an award for distinguished service for providing leadership to the legal profession in protecting and advancing human rights, civil liberties, and social justice. Walter is from Wisconsin and from a family steeped in the fight for human rights and equality. As a 6-year-old child, he sat on the knee of Dr. Martin Luther King and was introduced to Thurgood Marshall and other civil rights leaders of the day. Unusually, in high school and later in college, he studied and became proficient in Russian. This was to play an important part in his life. His global career, both in his practice and as a government appointee, has spanned the United States, Russia, Central Asia, and now the UK. We hope in this discussion to cover as many facets as possible of his interesting and well-lived life. Welcome, Walter. Thank you for joining me today.
Walter: Thank you very much. It’s a pleasure.
Speaker C: First of all, I’d like to talk a little bit about your family background and your upbringing. You were brought up in an African-American family in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a very illustrious family by all accounts. Can you give us some idea of your childhood and what it was like growing up?
Walter: Well, my father was a dentist and my mother was a biologist. After a few years, well, after her third child, she stopped working. We lived in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. We lived in quite a middle-class Black integrated community until, until my sister was going to high school. And she had been advanced in grade 7 to grade 8, and then they were going to advance her again. And my father said, there’s no sense in my daughter thinking that she’s the brightest person in the world. And they looked for another school system, and we moved out to an interesting suburb known as Mequon, Wisconsin. And that’s where we completed high school before we went off to college. And it was a beautiful area. We lived on several acres in the woods with few neighbors, we could ice skate from the stream that ran across our front yard down to the Milwaukee River, which is about a 3/4 of a mile ice skating route. And then we could skate or snowmobile up and down the river as long as as long as we, we could until we ran into dams and things like that. In grade school, I was one of 3 Black children in my class, and that remained that way mostly through high school as well. When we were in high school, a high school of 1,200 people had at one point, I think, 7 Blacks, 3 of whom I was related to. Yeah, so it um, it was, was a difficult environment for us. That being said, we, we moved into the community fairly well. We were active, we were mostly academically successful. The neighbors that we did have didn’t necessarily take to our move into Mequon particularly well. We had— we were not permitted to use the telephone because of the number of vicious calls that the house would get.
Speaker C: Really?
Walter: That wasn’t a serious problem for me because I was probably 9 at the time. It was a much more serious problem for my older sister who, of course, spent, like a teenager does, her life on the telephone with her friends. But ultimately we got a private additional line which was largely used by, I would say, the children, but really it was by my sister and then later my younger sister.
Speaker C: That’s great. Your family were activists in equality and human rights issues.
Walter: Oh yes, we had a long tradition going back to my, my mother’s parents primarily. My grandfather was an avid civil rights activist, particularly focusing on education, but not exclusively. My mother was active with the League of Women Voters and the NAACP. And of course, there were rules in many parts, including the area that we were in, that forbade Blacks, often Jews, and others to purchase housing. And we circumvented that because the woman from whom we bought our home was a friend. And so she— when my parents called her to say we’re looking for places with good schools. She said, well, as it happens, I’m about to sell my house and move to England.
Speaker C: Oh really?
Walter: Yes. And so we were able to buy her house directly without, without much noise or activity.
Speaker C: Yes.
Walter: It was only after we moved that certain neighbors became concerned. That being said, in general, we had tremendous support from the community in Macon, and we were very active and in the high school activities.
Speaker C: And did you experience any direct discrimination yourself on account of your color?
Walter: Well, regularly. If I had— when I was older, if I had friends driving out to visit us, they would routinely be stopped by the police.
Speaker C: Yes.
Walter: It wasn’t so much a factor that affected me because, of course, I was recognized and my family was known. And there were, know, there you was what I would call a constant series of microaggressions. But having said that, were— we I was active in debate and forensics and was quite successful in those environments. And I was elected president of my high school class. Yes. So there were things that, that counterbalanced this. My sister was a tremendously successful perhaps the most successful actress and singer of the time. Yes. In the high school. And she went off to do drama at Harvard and various other places and ended up as a television producer in Hollywood. So my younger sister survived all of that. My brother had more difficulty. And so he was sent away to a prep school in the East. And then partially because he loved to ski, went out to Colorado, Colorado Rocky Mountain School before going to college.
Speaker C: So you’ve all been very successful. Can you tell us about how you met Martin Luther King? What was the— what were the circumstances?
Walter: I would say that we’ve all had a few good moments. Well, my parents were active with the NAACP and with the Urban League.. And during the late— I think it was the late ’50s, it may have been the early ’60s— it was customary for people like Martin Luther King and Thurgood Marshall and others who were active to come to the annual gala dinners and things that were hosted by those organizations. And they were largely fundraising activities for the civil rights movement. And Yes, because I um, I was, because was with my mother when Martin Luther King came to town. I met him behind the stage, and I don’t know, I was probably 5 or 6, and he literally picked me up and sat me on his lap as he did his press conference.
Speaker C: Do you have pictures of it?
Walter: I do not have pictures. Unfortunately, yes, there may have been pictures somewhere But the many, many years later, when my mother was elderly, we had a flood at the house and a lot of the original family documentation got destroyed, particularly a lot of my grandfather’s letters and things.
Speaker C: Oh, what a pity.
Walter: Yeah, they they were, were in the basement in boxes and they were just destroyed by the flood.
Speaker C: And did you always want to do law? With the debating at high school?
Walter: When I was young, my family fed me— I was an avid reader, and my family fed me books about the trials and tribulations of Thurgood Marshall and others. And so I grew up with a strong sense of justice and the battle for civil rights. When I got to high school, I was studying the Russian language. And I got immersed in Russian literature and loved the world of Pushkin and Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. And so when I went to college, I continued to study Russian. And I was just stubborn. I didn’t feel I’d learned it adequately in high school, and I wanted to learn it.
Patrick De: Yeah.
Walter: And in high school, they encouraged me to go to Russia because because they said I understood the fundamentals of the language, but I needed a lot of practice. And so I went to Russia in my freshman year for a while, and then I went back to study Russian later. And along the way, I was really a political science major, but I realized in my junior year that I had virtually satisfied the Russian, or the Russian studies major as well, and so I finished with both. When I graduated, it was during the post-Nixon era, and the only people who were really interested in Russian students of the quality that I was were the intelligence services. I didn’t— I wasn’t under any illusions that I would have a strong enough Russian language ability to say do graduate work in Russia. Yes, in Russian. And so in thinking about what to do next, I, like so many people, applied to law schools, right? That was not inconsistent with my interests. And so I went to law school. When I finished law school, nobody was interested in a Russian-speaking lawyer in the United States, so I went into corporate law.
Speaker C: You had had to, you to shelve the Russian temporarily. What made you interested in Russian in the first place?
Walter: My mother encouraged me. My sister studied Russian.
Speaker C: Oh, really?
Walter: I I think, think that my older sister Winifred studied Russian. I think, in fact, I took a look at the language options, which were pretty good at my high school, a choice of Spanish, French, Latin, Russian. I don’t remember, German might have been an option. But to me, Russian sounded most interesting. I was just studying the language because largely the literature hooked me.
Speaker C: Yes, yes. So it came into your life later on, but let’s go back then. So you graduated from the School of Law in Berkeley.
Walter: Yes.
Speaker C: And then you went into private practice?
Walter: I joined a firm called Michael Bussin Friedrich in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I kind of looked nationally and was trying to head to New York because I was interested in international practice.
Speaker C: Yes.
Walter: But none of the international firms in New York were really doing law with Russia either.
Speaker C: Yes.
Walter: And so the Milwaukee firms were competitive, and they of course showed a greater interest. And so I, I I joined, joined a firm in Milwaukee.
Speaker C: And were there many people of your own background in that firm?
Walter: Well, if you mean, were there many people of color in the firm? You know, in fact, there were not many people of color in what I would call the big law corporate community. Yes, I think I was the third or the fourth. Yes, in the state as an associate in a major firm. There were some extraordinary lawyers who became friends of mine over time. Yes, reporter at Foley Lardner and John Daniels at Quarles Brady. John actually ended up being the managing partner of the Quarles firm. Yes. And Richard was a classmate of Hillary and Bill Clinton from Yale, and he was, I believe, the first Black partner in a major firm in Wisconsin.
Speaker C: Oh, really? Yes.
Walter: Yeah.
Speaker C: And you got support then from some of the other Black lawyers in the area? Were they supportive?
Walter: They were tremendously supportive.
Speaker C: Yes.
Walter: They gave me extraordinary guidance, and, and they had good wisdom.
Speaker C: And did you experience any particular obstacles then due to your color in your work?
Walter: Not within the firm, no. The firm had to talk its way through, um, hiring a Black lawyer, but they did that with relatively low noise. Um, I— we became I became an associate.
Speaker C: I in it.
Walter: I.
Speaker C: Was.
Walter: Had a significant profile in the firm and in the state. And I have no serious, serious regrets about that. In fact, I thank them tremendously for the opportunity. Yeah. We— I did have clients who said and did weird things. I had a client who I was having lunch with who said, I can remember when we didn’t have racial problems in this country.
Speaker C: Oh, really?
Walter: To which my, um, my partner who was with us said, well, I’m not sure exactly when that was. But for the most part, the firm gave me a nice platform to do the sorts of things that I wanted to do.
Speaker C: Yes. And what type of law was that that you were doing?
Walter: Well, my background at the time, for the first 7 years of my practice, was largely corporate officing, corporate offering, mergers and acquisitions, with a fair amount of litigation, commercial and corporate litigation, usually related to financial regulation or corporate activity.
Speaker C: And you’ve stayed throughout your career in the corporate area in general, would that be correct?
Walter: Yes, absolutely. When I was there, I did some work, some international work, international arbitration work as well. But then, then the Soviet Union began to change in 1985.
Speaker C: Yes.
Walter: I had been practicing for 5 years at that point. I had also been active with bar associations both locally and nationally, and I was very active with the American Bar Association, and I was very active with the international activities of the American Bar Association. Yes. So when perestroika and glasnost began to come about during 1985. The American Bar Association reached out to the Russian legal community and to the Soviet Union and began to talk about creating an independent judiciary and an independent bar and talk about human rights issues.
Speaker C: Yes.
Walter: As one of my friends who was in the association, when, when this began, I basically said I would like to be involved, and she said, get off your knees, we’re happy to have you.
Speaker C: So that was a perfect storm then for you, really, wasn’t it? With your Russian and with being involved in the ABA and with the perestroika, it all came together.
Walter: It did. At that time, it was all voluntary, but that was fine with me. We had a foresighted governor, his name was Tommy Thompson, and he gave me the opportunity to become Commissioner of Securities for the state of Wisconsin.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Walter: And that was consistent with my interests. But one of my— my only criteria for doing that was that he would permit me to continue to do the work that I was doing with the Bar Association and with Russia. Yes. And he agreed to that wholeheartedly. So while I was trying to help regulate the financial industry just after the crash in 1987, October of 1987. I also was running back and forth to the Soviet Union, then Soviet Union, on judicial exchanges and lawyers exchanges and lecturing on human rights and lecturing on the development of the securities market and corporate activities. In the Soviet Union.
Speaker C: And you were working two full-time jobs essentially at that point.
Walter: Well, I am one of these people who always considered the bar-related work to be a part of your job.
Speaker C: Yes.
Walter: And it is significant that, that as Commissioner of Securities, I did not have to keep billable hours, so the, the productivity level was less of a burden for me. And of course, I had a very good staff And so I could focus on the things that they needed me for, as opposed to all aspects of the day-to-day operations of the agency.
Speaker C: And how did you find Russia during that period?
Walter: Well, Russia was moving rapidly from the time when I first went, which was 1973, and it was dynamic, I think, is the way to describe it.
Speaker C: Yes.
Walter: You know, I met brilliant Russian lawyers. We had a program called the Soviet Lawyer Internship Program where we would bring lawyers to the United States. The American Bar Association would bring lawyers to the United States and they would work as interns and they would work in a variety of different places around the country. By having the opportunity to interview almost 200 Russian lawyers a year from all sectors of Russian society, yes, we got a very good understanding of what was going on in the country. Yes, it was exciting, which I got.
Speaker C: To what the public reports were.
Walter: Yes, I mean, we, we got a lawyer’s perspective, and as lawyers are involved in just about everything, you know, we spoke with defense lawyers and prosecutors, we spoke to lawyers who represented unions, lawyers who represented large state corporations, we spoke with lawyers who represented international corporations. We spoke with lawyers who were counsel to city and state organizations. So we had a very good insight into the activities of— that were going on in the country and the transition. We spoke with young lawyers who were politicians who were trying to drive change in the country. And of course, we also had the opportunity to travel to places like Armenia and discuss the situations in Armenia and go to Karabakh and the Kichivan.
Speaker C: Yes.
Walter: And hear from people who were frightened of the transitions.
Speaker C: Yes.
Walter: It was was a, it a dynamic time and very educational for me.
Speaker C: Yes. And what was it fragile at that time, the perestroika, early on?
Walter: The only way to answer that is to say yes.
Speaker C: Yes.
Walter: So it’s not necessarily apparent And of course, they’re at different times. We had pre-notice that people were going to try to— well, literally, a mayor, a deputy mayor named Stakhanovich, Sergei Stakhanovich, told us that they were going to take away the power from the Communist Party, which of course to us was unbelievable. And, um, you know, ultimately they closed the Soviet Union. Yes. And I was fortunate enough to be in the Kremlin on the day that they lowered the flag of the Soviet Union and raised the flag of the Russian Federation. That was a historic moment. Yes, tremendously historic and quite extraordinary. I never actually dreamed that I would be able to be a participant/witness of yes, changes of this magnitude.
Speaker C: Do you still get a tingle in your spine when you think of it?
Walter: I do, yes, but that’s also long past. Yes, um, the— in addition to the impact of the transition, there was an age of hope. Yes, expectation. And we anticipated that the Russian Federation and the neighboring republics would grow into an environment of a new dynamism and freedom and open private economic activity.
Speaker C: Yes.
Walter: And I moved to the Russian Federation in 1994 with some of those expectations and worked with lawyers who were doing some of that activity, and we, we helped build major public corporations and We did the first offering of Lukoil, for example, and many others. Of course, all of the enthusiasm that we carried into the country and the enthusiasm that was shared by many of the people with whom we worked was gradually shattered as Yeltsin evolved into Putin and the country became, well, what is an oligopoly.
Speaker C: And do you think that the Western expectations around that time were somewhat naive now in retrospect?
Walter: I think it’s fair to say that my expectations were naive.
Speaker C: Really? Yes.
Walter: There are always people who, who never thought that the transition was going to take place.
Speaker C: Yes.
Walter: Even I was aware of the challenges that the transition faced. What I was not aware of was how quickly and effectively corruption would manifest itself. Yes.. But I look back at the last few years that we’ve had in the United States, and I see a parallel as to how quickly it can happen.
Speaker C: Yes, indeed. Yes. And you met Gorbachev?
Walter: I did. And working with the American Bar Association, he was involved.
Speaker C: And did you like living in Russia?
Walter: I did. In many ways, it was among the high point of my years of practice. My family did not. It was very difficult for them. They had moved from a comfortable U.S. Environment, community, to a place where they lacked the friends, they lacked the language access. My wife, whose family— she was Jewish, was from Lithuania and Ukraine— was always skeptical of the idea of moving back to the Russian Federation.
Speaker C: Yes.
Walter: Yeah. She had a bit of a— Her view was, my family left this country for a reason, and I’m not sure that it’s wise to go back.
Speaker C: Yes.
Walter: And there were very difficult aspects of it.
Speaker C: Yes.
Walter: It was in many ways a crude and even cruel country. The first night that I left to go visit our office in Kazakhstan, a bomb went off in the building. That we had our apartment.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Walter: Now the building was a full block long and— or a full block square. And so the bomb was a block away from where we lived. But the newspapers reported that the bomb was set by the Armenian fruit mafia to blow up a building that licensed fruit kiosks on the street, or blow up an office that licensed fruit kiosks on the street.
Speaker C: Yes.
Walter: I have no idea whether or not that’s true, But what I do know was the first time that I left my family alone in Moscow, a bomb went off in the building that we were in. And my wife, who said, “I didn’t know who to call.”.
Speaker C: Yes.
Walter: “I didn’t have the numbers of the right people. I couldn’t speak to the police or the authorities. I knew that it was a bomb, but I just convinced myself that it was a snowplow.” So there is no minimizing the impact that it had on them. There were tremendous challenges. The reason that we moved from Russia was that my son was sledding one day and hit a major hill near Moscow University, and he fractured his skull. He hit a post. I took him to the American medical clinic, and they basically told him— told me that there was nothing that they could do for him. That I considered to be an unacceptable answer, so I called my brother-in-law, who’s the head of emergency medicine, or with the emergency medical faculty of Northwestern University Hospital in Chicago, and he told me I needed a neurosurgeon and a pediatric neurosurgeon, and I needed them right right away.
Speaker C: Yes.
Walter: So I called our security people and they identified Moscow’s leading neurosurgeon and pediatric neurosurgeon, literally sent cars to pick them up and opened a clinic in Moscow, the leading neurological neurosurgery clinic. And they worked on my son for many hours and It was horrific, the sort of worst experience that an expatriate in a difficult country could— I can imagine, I think. Yes. The— I got tremendous support from my people, and they came down prepared to purchase the clinic. Yeah. But my son was fine. They did a tremendous job, and shortly thereafter we flew him to the Great Ormond Street Hospital, which is the leading pediatric neuro facility in the UK.
Speaker C: Yes.
Walter: The Russians referred us to specific physicians. They checked him out and said that my son had been very well cared for, perhaps better cared for than they could have done in the UK.
Speaker C: Yes.
Walter: And he, of course, is doing fine. He is now a professor or assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University. And it was traumatic, and I was not seriously able to ask my family to move back to Moscow. Yes, yes. Even though it worked out, yeah, finish his semester and then we moved to the UK.
Speaker C: So even though it worked out, um, all right in the end, the process was too scary and too and too unpredictable. Was that your thinking?
Walter: Accidents can happen anywhere.
Speaker C: Yes.
Walter: But the access to facilities is taken for granted in the West. And, um, we have high expectations. And the— it was the view of my now ex-wife that I was gambling with the family’s health.
Speaker C: Okay, yes, yes.
Walter: And I was not prepared to continue that or do that again to the same extent.
Speaker C: Yes. And did that close the Russian chapter in your life then?
Walter: Well, it was a transition.
Speaker C: Can I ask you about another part of your life’s work, human rights? That’s been a major, really important aspect of your devotion, dedication over the years. Um, can you tell me a bit about your human rights involvement?
Walter: Given my family history and the nature of activities in the United States, it is inconceivable for me to be a lawyer and not include as an element of my life the fight for justice. And because my firms were less interested in that, some of the firms that I’ve worked with have been extremely conservative. For example, my first firm did not permit me to represent the NAACP in school desegregation cases, which I had the opportunity to do. I, I found that the Bar Association was a way to, to permit me to continue my advocacy, and in that capacity, I worked with the Milwaukee, Wisconsin Young Lawyers Association I worked with the State Bar and I worked with the American Bar Association. And I was privileged to have some leadership positions, several leadership positions in the American Bar Association. And bar associations set policy and they advocate positions. We were very effective in areas relating to reproductive rights. We were effective at the time in areas relating to voting. We were effective in deconstructing discriminatory activities in many corporate environments, and we were active in the areas of breaking down discrimination within within the, the practice of the law, including setting judicial ethics standards and legal standards in relationship to discrimination. And we also advocated policies nationally and internationally in relationship to human rights. And I was fortunate to chair the section on civil rights and social justice, and I was fortunate to chair the Center on Human Rights, which focuses extensively on protecting lawyers who are being shut down by governments while advocating on behalf of human rights defendants, usually.
Speaker C: Yes.
Walter: We also worked years ago when I was involved with the, the African Rule of Law Initiative on anti-trafficking initiatives in Eastern Africa. There were many tremendous opportunities to provide leadership and contributions to the development of human rights, including working with the United Nations.
Speaker C: And what do you think of the state of human rights in the world today?
Walter: It is a complex question and it’s probably related to a particular country or a particular region. During the Obama administration, we made tremendous progress, in my opinion, in relationship to commitments of, for example, the G20 to elimination of poverty. To protection of the rights of women. CEDAW, the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women and Violence Against Women, is one of the things that the American Bar Association led the United States to adopt, um, in the United Nations. There’s a UN convention. So we had many successes. We’ve also had many failures. The Trump administration has largely backed away from the leadership of the United States and the development and protection of human rights. The Biden administration has signaled significant return to American traditions. And we also have had a substantial breakdown of the democratic structures in the United And that hopefully we are turning around with the Biden administration as well. So it’s difficult. The life and participation in democratic activities is way too difficult in today’s world. And there’s a tremendous amount of work to do.
Speaker C: And you say that there’s been a big setback throughout the Trump administration with respect to voting rights and equality, and will that take long to undo?
Walter: It’s taken 300-plus years, um, so far. I expect that in the event that the Congress is able to pass the John Lewis bill, even something stronger than the, the Voting Rights Act, then that will make substantial changes in the United States. However, what is very clear right now is that Republican legislatures around the country are imposing substantial restrictions to voting in the United States, and voter suppression is probably at an all-time high. At least the effort is probably at an all-time high. And that’s saying an awful lot because when you look back to the Jim Crow eras, And I suppose back to the time when the Constitution was passed and people of color were considered 3/5 persons, I suppose it’s inappropriate for me to say it is at an all-time high, but there is certainly an effort to maintain that tradition in the United States, and that needs to change.
Speaker C: And your own grandfather’s vote was suppressed. Is that right?
Walter: Oh, everybody in my family’s generations before have been suppressed. My grandfather told us tales about about the, the tests. He was a brilliant man, as I mentioned, an early Amherst graduate, attended Harvard and did further work at the University of Indiana. He had a minor in Latin when he graduated from Amherst. So that when he went to vote, they would offer him something in French and say, can you read this? And of course, with the Latin background, he could understand what the French said quite easily. And then they’d offer something— offer him something in another language, and he you would, know, do the same. And they would start by offering him something in English, say, can you read this? Of course he could read this. Then in French, and then finally they would offer him something in Chinese, and he would say, “Well, I guess it says that I don’t get to vote.” But he was a tremendously proud man. He was a large man, and he had a very dry wit, and he did not accept discrimination lightly.
Speaker C: Can I ask you then about the current state of gender and racial representation within the legal profession?
Walter: Well, it remains terrible. It is better than it was perhaps when I began my practice. There are a lot of initiatives by major corporations to require diverse legal teams on the, on the groups that service their work. And this is helpful, but it hasn’t been as effective as we would have liked. The numbers are still very low in relationship to, um, number of women partners, the number of partners of color, even though the numbers in the schools, the law schools, graduating from law schools, and have improved significantly, though I have to confess they’ve gone up and down as there have been challenges against affirmative action. I don’t know how to make that change in the United States. One of the ways to make a change is, of course, the new Biden administration has the most diverse cabinet in the history of the United States. That, in addition to many other things, and in fact one of the least significant reflections of that activity, is that it develops talent. And that talent will go out and develop other talent. I am pleased to say over the many years of my practice, I have had the privilege of developing many women and women of color and young lawyers of color. When you have a position in leadership in the profession, you attract others.. And many of them have gone on to develop very successful careers. In the UK, you have a bifurcated system. You have solicitors and you have barristers. And the solicitors essentially hire the barristers. The barrister ranks are relatively low in terms of diversity outside of certain particular areas of practice, like the criminal practice representing the impoverished communities. But if you look to the leading commercial chambers, the numbers are quite low. And over the years, I spent scores of millions of pounds on barristers, and I realized that if I had insisted that we develop key barristers, particularly juniors, I could have developed I could have grown, um, several QCs. Yes, over the last 20, 25 years of my practice in the UK. Now, if my firm made a commitment to that, because of course the scores of millions of pounds that I spent was only a portion of that spent on litigation by my firm, yes, then we could have doubled or tripled that number. And if the leading partners of color in London made those commitments in the leading firms, then the number is probably tenfold. And if 5 leading firms, um, say the Magic Circle firms, made a similar commitment, then the bar would be diversified in 10 or 15 years. There would be scores of QCs of color, because in most cases the issue is not the talent or the skill set, it is the opportunity. I once had one of my senior partners told me when I first started my practice that 80% of the lawyers can do the work, but only 10% of lawyers can attract the work.
Speaker C: Yes.
Walter: And if you take, you know, young people admitted to the bar and you train them, you have— and you train them with first-rate organizations like the Global 100 law firms who all have offices in the UK, then you give them extraordinary training and they will become the next era or class of potential QCs.
Speaker C: Is there a practical way then to develop that idea that you have?
Walter: Well, I suppose to call the firms together and say this is a priority. And can you do that? Some of them will buy into it.
Speaker C: Yes. Are you in a position to do that now? You’re retired from active practice now, is that correct?
Walter: Not with the same level of influence that I had when I was in but, practice, um, but I may know a few people.
Speaker C: And, and you’re hopeful to develop that idea then in a practical way?
Walter: Let’s see, I’ll, I’ll I’ll raise, raise the issue with a few people who are better positioned to do it than I am.
Speaker C: Well, that’s great. And just by the way, why do you think that is the case, that the barristers have less representation from from minorities and women rather than the solicitor?
Walter: Well, I don’t think the barristers have less representation than solicitors. I think they both have a paucity of diversity.
Speaker C: Yes.
Walter: I think the barristers are more under the control of the solicitor community. And it does not take the entire solicitor community to make that impact or make that difference. It takes a core, and it seems to me that can and should be done. All of the major firms have suggested that they have a commitment to diversity, and so let’s put them to the challenge.
Speaker C: Yes. So we’re approaching the end of the interview now. I might ask you one or two quickfire questions. Do you have any overriding sort of motto or creed that you live by?
Walter: A couple of things come to mind. The first that I have advised to young lawyers is at all costs protect your integrity.
Speaker C: Yes.
Walter: And this is a challenge, particularly relationship to the second issue, which is young people going into the profession often think that they have succeeded by getting access to the profession. And in my experience, it’s not so much that you achieve the point where you are— the point where you are a success as much as your successes prepare you to take on greater challenges.
Speaker C: Yes.
Walter: And the, the way you handle the greater challenges determines whether you reach another level of success.
Speaker C: It’s it’s a— an incremental thing.
Walter: Yes. It’s not an easy profession. And I, in my experience, took on a few extraordinary challenges: trying to change the nature of the financial hierarchy of South Africa at the end of the apartheid days, immediately after the end of the apartheid days, and changing the nature of the Russian Federation battling battles in the 5 countries of Central Asia. Those were unusual stretches.
Speaker C: Yes, indeed.
Walter: And, and I’ve had some great successes, and I’ve had some extraordinary failures. But along the way, I’ve had many great moments. When 9/11 happened, it was a tremendous shock to those of us in the legal community. I was here in London at the time. But we lost people, um, people who were working in the towers and people who were affected by the collapse of the towers. New York basically shut down, and it shut down for a week. The markets closed. And in the firm that I was in, there was a tremendous amount of email traffic about how it was affecting everybody and how much of a tragedy the incident was. And as we were all grieving, if that’s the proper term, we got a message from our managing partner who appreciated and acknowledged all of the pain that the lawyers in the firm were going through, but he recognized that the pain the clients were going through was greater. And the clients needed advice and they needed it now. And it was a reminder that as a lawyer, your client needs you when your client needs you and you need to be available for them to respond. And that was a lesson to me. It was fundamentally understood, but I never understood it with quite the sheer profundity as in that circumstance. That even though it was a difficult time for all of us, that you had to rise above the pain and serve the needs of the clients who were in desperate situations.
Speaker C: And that was the lesson you learned about that time, and that’s the advice you would give to your younger self?
Walter: It’s certainly one of the key pieces of advice. And it’s the nature of the legal profession. Historically, the lawyers don’t solicit work. Clients come to the lawyers when they are needed.
Speaker C: How are you spending your time at the moment?
Walter: Oh, I’m trying to be an investor. In some things on the continent of Africa and trying to put together a portfolio, a private portfolio with a few other individuals.
Speaker C: Very interesting. What are your hobbies and interests?
Walter: Well, I enjoy golf and I enjoy bicycling. I play a lot of chess when I get the opportunity. And of course, I’m at a point in life where my goal is to and experience family as much as they’ll permit me the opportunity to do so.
Speaker C: I want to thank you very much, Walter. It’s been a pleasure speaking with you today. And thank you for sharing your history and your insights with us. You’ve had a wonderful life. You’ll have a lot more years of wonderful life, I’m sure. You’ll be a total success in the investment world. And you might shake up some other countries in the world that need shaking up before you call it a day.
Walter: Thank you very much, and thank you for the opportunity.
Speaker C: Thanks again.
Walter: Take care.
Speaker C: I’m Patrick Devlin. Thank you for listening to our 50 Faces Focus series. If you liked what you heard and would like to tune in to hear more inspiring lawyers and their stories, please subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Patrick De: This podcast is for information only. Only and should not be construed as investment or legal advice. All views are personal and should not be attributed to the organizations of the host or any guest.
