Laura Halonen

Career

Arbroad: We would like to have the facts straight and the whole story of your career in somewhat chronological order. You have quite a few jurisdictions in your experience – could you please briefly summarize your career path, starting with your traineeship and up to today?

Laura: I started as a very middle-of-the-road English law trainee qualifying as a solicitor, in the city of London, at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer (“Freshfields”) at the time. I had done my vacation placement with them in the litigation team. I had discovered this to be extremely interesting, and there was an idea in my head that litigation or dispute resolution might be something that is likely going to interest me.

But it really all started with the secondment I was sent on to the Paris office of Freshfields… It’s another one of these opportunities I just stumbled upon. I wanted to go to Thailand or Vietnam. Those were very sought-after secondments. Freshfields did not take me for either of those. But they had six spots for Paris, and clearly not enough people wanted to go. There, again, I was put in the arbitration team, I think not because I was interested in it or they were interested in me, but because the corporate and finance partners got to pick first and nobody else wanted me. So I really landed there completely by accident. Within two weeks, I knew I was neither going back to London nor going to do anything else with this firm apart from arbitration. It was all very much love at first sight.

Paris, France.

I eventually returned to London to finish my training contract. I had a special deal whereby I was sitting in the litigation team in London but mostly continued on my Paris files. It was already known at the time that I would qualify into the arbitration team in Paris. So that’s where I spent the formative years of my career.

Most people these days have done a specialist course or master’s degree, and I always say that I went to the Freshfields school of arbitration because that’s what it very much was. It was a very steep learning curve, in particular on the investment side, because investment law and arbitration was really picking up at the time when I was there. There were no textbooks. It was make it up as you go along. It was a very intense time. After about five years I left, and that’s when I went back to university. I went back to Oxford to do a master’s degree… to really just think about what I wanted to do because I hadn’t had time to breathe during my time at Freshfields, let alone to think about what I wanted to do when I grow up.

Oriel College’s First Quad [Andrew Shiva, CC BY-SA 4.0]. Laura was a member of Oriel College while she was pursuing her master’s degree, i.e., Bachelor of Civil Law (BCL), at the University of Oxford.

While I was back at Oxford, catching up a little bit on the education that I should have had before, to my great surprise and horror, I realised that arbitration was actually what I wanted to do. But I wanted to do it in a slightly different setting. Then I heard that LALIVE in Geneva was kind of the first and at that time almost the only arbitration boutique. Switzerland obviously also had a reputation for being more human-friendly than some of the big teams in the big cities. I applied to them, got accepted, and spent almost ten years in Switzerland, doing again pretty much exclusively arbitration with a lot of focus on investment arbitration. During that time, I witnessed LALIVE changing from the boutique it originally was to a very big well-oiled arbitration and more generally legal machine…. At the end of that, I thought that this has become something I deliberately left behind a little while ago. It was time for me to move on. And that’s when I moved to Berlin.

It was very clearly and expressly not a career-oriented move. I think it’s important for people in this field to be open about that not everything we do in our lives is to do with our careers. We have other things going on. And that’s okay. The career can, to some extent, adjust around our lives. Since I was established enough, I had the confidence that I can take my skills and do it a little bit more my way. I got in touch with Wagner Arbitration. I knew Philipp (Wagner) and Florian (Dupuy) beforehand, but I also knew I didn’t want to work for them. And I didn’t want to be a partner in a firm. So I just said, “Look, let’s find a way of working together on a kind of more collaborative basis.” Then I knew that I was going to have my own business on the side, I was going to do arbitrator work, I was going to collaborate. I still continued to collaborate with LALIVE on some cases. So I’ve got quite a broad practice now.

Then, of course, to put the cherry on top, Professor (Gerhard) Wagner and Alicja (Zielinska-Eisen) got in touch with me to ask me to teach a part of the Investment Law and Arbitration course (at Humboldt University) about a year and a half ago now. That means that I get to do everything I enjoy.

Faculty of Law, Humboldt University.

Arbroad: Were there any principles or internal guidelines that you formed back when you were still starting as a lawyer that you carried out into your future career and possibly follow even today?

Laura: I think we all have got to decide how we do things and what we do; some of it we know, and some of it we learn. For me, there are two sides: what do I do, and how do I do it. The “what do I do” for me is very innate, and I have fairly strong, some would say obstinate, values that I uphold, which means that there are certain kinds of cases that I will not take, and there are certain kinds of clients that I will not represent. But then when it comes to how to do things, I have always wanted to be extremely open and to try to learn and absorb from those who are better in the work than I am. I have been extremely lucky to work with and be mentored by some amazing lawyers. I think I have tried at least to pass it on to a certain extent, to teach that to the next generation. It is up to them to decide what to take of it. We all need to adjust to a certain extent what we have been taught to our personalities and preferred style of working. I think there is a huge amount of education that does not come from textbooks and that is inherent in arbitration as a field; a lot of it you can only learn by doing it with people who have done it before.

Arbroad: After spending six years in Paris, you decided to pursue a BCL degree at Oxford. If you had to put yourself in the shoes of a very fresh lawyer, graduating in the past two or three years when the entrance into the arbitration field seems really competitive, would your decision have been the same to have your next degree after some time of practicing law?

Laura: For me, it was the best of all worlds. It was good to go into practice immediately after having graduated and done my training contract, because I always have enjoyed the practical side of law. Then by the time I went back to the university, I could be quite discerning about what I took away from that year. I knew what I wanted to learn. I knew that some parts of what I was being taught had no relevance in the real world. So, well done to all the stuffy Oxford academics for sitting in their armchairs, stroking their cats, and thinking about these things, but I did not need to care.

I know a lot of people decide to do a master’s degree straight after the undergraduate studies. They are really stressed about the exams and their grades. I didn’t need to be, because I had already established myself in arbitration, and I knew that in reality no one cares about your grades. I had an amazing time, it was, if I didn’t have a child I would say, the best year of my life [laughing]. It was an amazing year, and largely because I got exactly what I wanted out of it, because I knew what I wanted, having practiced before.

Arbroad: Why did you decide to come back specifically to Oxford? Weren’t you tempted to diversify your educational profile and go for a master’s degree elsewhere?

Laura: I looked at some universities in the US like everyone does, but the prices were just ridiculously prohibitive. I come from a country where education is free all the way to the doctoral level. So when I am being told that I need to fork out tens of thousands for a one year master’s degree, I mean, “no” is the answer.

I looked at some options on the continent, but I was a bit worried… this was before the time that we started having all these amazing master’s degrees in dispute settlement. It would have been a general master’s degree anyway, and not many of them were in English. The only other language I could have done it in was French, but frankly I was dissuaded by some French colleagues who were not very complimentary of the master’s degrees in French universities. That’s how I ended up going back to England.

I actually thought, surprise-surprise, I would apply to Cambridge, so that I would have the two by comparison. I am going to out Zachary Douglas here, who, while he was a Professor at Cambridge, told me, “Don’t come to Cambridge, go to Oxford” [laughing]. That’s what I did, and it really was the right choice because I knew the place. Since I only had one year, I could just focus on the things that I wanted to do and enjoy in Oxford.

Arbroad: You earlier mentioned that your BCL year in Oxford was one of the best in your life. What was your biggest takeaway from your master’s degree?

Laura: Again, let’s not forget that it is not all about the law. Oxford is a university town, it is extremely diverse and I made some of my best friends there, and they are not lawyers. These are doctors, people in logistics, people who are making the world more sustainable and liveable. So that was a big part of it. It is not a faculty-based social structure that many universities have, so I am very grateful for that. I also had my hobbies which I was passionate about. Ice hockey really took up a huge amount of time during my Oxford days and I have no regrets about that [laughing]. But when it comes to the law and the studying, I mentioned this already that it is as mundane as having realised during that time that, first of all, academic study was ultimately not for me, and that among the different potential career paths going forward, arbitration in general, and investment arbitration in particular, was my passion and I just had to stop fighting it, but go back and embrace it.

Arbroad: Speaking about master’s degree specifically in arbitration, would you agree that such a degree has in recent years become an essential element of a portfolio of an arbitration lawyer who is willing to move jurisdictions?

Laura: Well, first of all let’s just be clear that I think these LL.M. in arbitration programs are great. Now, is it essential? I would not go as far as to say that. Is it useful? Is it difficult to get in without one? Yes. Is it impossible to get in and in particular move jurisdictions without one? No, but you need to be even luckier than you already need to do with one of these master’s degrees in your pocket, and you need to have some other strategy, other special skills, or maybe you have several years of experience in your home jurisdiction and you work for a big firm, so you can just move within the firm. You need something else that is exceptional and makes you very desirable in this field. But for most people, if you have the chance to do one of these programs, my question would really be, “why not?”

Arbroad: You moved to Berlin several years ago and as you said earlier, it was not exactly a career-driven decision. What motivated you to make this move?

Laura: I don’t understand how everyone who gets to choose – and most of us in this field do get to choose because of remote work having become the norm – doesn’t live in Berlin [laughing]. I mean, just from liveability stands, Berlin is by far the best city at least in all of Europe, with a little asterisk that the weather could be better. Apart from that, I don’t understand why I need to try to convince people to come to Berlin for the Berlin Dispute Resolution Days. Shouldn’t that be something that sells itself? Why isn’t everyone in Berlin, that’s the real question.

Berlin, Germany.

Arbroad: Speaking of Berlin Dispute Resolution Days, you were part of the coordinating committee last year. What role do you think this event will play in promoting Germany, and Berlin in particular, as an attractive arbitration hub?

Laura: We, of course, have high hopes for the event. Germany is a slightly different arbitration market, and in general it is a different kind of economy to pretty much all other countries in Europe, because it does not have a single hub. It does not have London or Paris. Luckily, in the arbitration context, it was easy to convince everyone that Berlin is the place to be because Berlin is not an arbitration hub, so it is not really competing with Frankfurt, or Munich, or Hamburg, or all the other cities that do consider themselves arbitration hubs, and even Germans admit that if there is one place in Germany that attracts people, it is Berlin. I won’t name any names but a very prominent arbitration practitioner from Hamburg said that if we want to encourage people and attract them to Germany, then it has to say “Berlin” in the name. So, we are hoping there is a genuine wish, at least at the institutional level, to do what we can to make Germany more open and make it integrate more into the world of arbitration, and the Berlin Arbitration Days… I wanted it to be called the Berlin Arbitration Days because of the great acronym, but then I was overruled [smiles], and it is Berlin Dispute Resolution Days, but I keep referring to it as Berlin Arbitration Days… They are one of the significant pillars in this plan, and we of course hope that next year we will have more time to organise it and we will have more people. The Humboldt (IDR) LL.M. is a big part of that, and they are organising their events as part of the week. I think it was a very good start, but we can do a lot better, and hopefully will – this year.

Arbroad: Work culture must have differed across jurisdictions you have worked in. Have you ever felt under pressure to adjust the work habits when you switched jurisdictions to follow the new unsaid rules established in those different jurisdictions?

Laura: There are two sides to it: some of it which is proper, that when you move to a different culture you adjust to this culture, and that is absolutely fine. But you do have to have the right to question as to whether how things are done is the right way of doing things. We should really embrace that somebody coming from the outside can look at this with an outsider’s view, and ask, “Okay, is it the way we should be doing this?” And some of it is just, “No, I should not be asked to do this.” I remember I was told as a very junior lawyer in Paris by a much more senior male lawyer that I was dressed inappropriately, not because I wasn’t wearing a suit, but, let me see if I can give an exact quote, my outfit “wouldn’t turn on a hundred-year-old”. This was already inappropriate at the time, and now it leaves people with the jaw hitting the floor. That’s just the sort of overt sexism, that’s the outdated French working culture, which was not okay. Thankfully, we have moved away from it, and hopefully that would not be happening anymore. I think partially the reason it’s changed is exactly because the French working culture (in law at least) has been open to other influences.

Arbroad: You are a common law qualified lawyer, but you have predominantly worked in civil law jurisdictions. Was your qualification a challenge or an advantage?

Laura: I think it was an advantage, and I recognize this is a bit of a privilege. For some reason, maybe it’s to do with English being the most prominent language in international arbitration, and most English speaking jurisdictions being common law countries, it seems easier for a common lawyer to work in arbitration in a civil law jurisdiction than it is for a civil lawyer to work in a common law jurisdiction. It’s even gone to the extent that if you are a civil lawyer working in arbitration in a civil law jurisdiction, it is expected that you have at least an LL.M. from a common law jurisdiction. Civil law lawyers are expected to know and understand common law, but common lawyers can be ignoramuses like me. I mean, by now my legal thinking is obviously hugely influenced by my decades in civil law jurisdictions… But that’s not an expectation. A young lawyer can come from England and start working in Paris, and nobody bats an eyelid if they do not do any sort of training in civil law. So there is this imbalance there I have been on the privileged side of and benefited from.

Arbroad: Now, working in Germany and not being a German-qualified lawyer, do you think that, on the balance of things, the efforts put in passing a bar in a foreign jurisdiction are worth the advantages that one could receive from it, or is it manageable to work in a jurisdiction without being qualified?

Laura: This is one of the regrets of my career – that I did not pay attention to that. Because of the EU regulations, it would have been extremely easy for me at the time (before Brexit) to become a member of the Paris bar after studying in the UK, but I did not bother to do it. I became a member of the Geneva bar, but only in the foreign section, meaning I lost the membership when I left the country. So, this is a regret of mine. If you do practice in the jurisdiction, take advantage of the opportunities you may have to integrate into that legal system. If the local bar is not too much effort, put in that effort, really gain knowledge – and maybe not even knowledge, but a certificate which shows you have knowledge of this legal system and you understand it. I am a living embodiment of the fact that you do not need to do that, but I would definitely recommend it.

Arbroad: Do you think it is necessary to speak the local language of the city where you are working as an international arbitration practitioner?

Laura: It is not necessary. The most important thing is to perfect your English. And there are no two ways about it. I see it all the time now when I look at the pleadings, in particular as an arbitrator, and also as counsel, that even from very good firms with good reputation, you at times get fairly poorly-drafted pleadings. It seems to be becoming more and more acceptable to plead in bad English. I am probably showing myself to be a bit of a dinosaur, but I do not think it is a good development. If you put yourself out as someone able to plead in a language, then you must master that language. I have spent fifteen years in a French-speaking environment, and while I am perfectly comfortable in everyday French, I would not plead in French. I have done bilingual arbitrations where I pleaded in English and I read pleadings, materials, and decisions in French, but for me the level that you need in French in order to represent a client to the standard that the client should be entitled to expect is extremely high. Why does that same requirement not apply to English? I think it should.

Is it an advantage to speak the local language? Of course it is. Putting to one side the legal side of it, just from a personal, social aspect, you get a lot more from any city or place if you speak the language. Germany is a great example. I would have to spend a decade of really just focusing on German in order to speak it at a level that would allow me to do my work in German, because legal German is eight steps higher than your everyday German. But I do hope that my “social” German is one day at an acceptable level.

Arbroad: We would like to finish up this section by talking about family. We know that you are not only a successful arbitration lawyer, but also a mother. How do you balance these two important life-elements: career and family?

Laura: You don’t. And everyone who says they do is a liar. Something has to give, something always gives. That is fine – life is all about choices, but let’s not pretend that an extremely busy and successful arbitration practitioner is also a devoted and present parent. They are not, and that is fine – this is a personal choice that is absolutely acceptable. But it is a choice.

One of the reasons why I moved to Berlin and left LALIVE was because I was needed more as a parent. I wanted to be more present. I wanted to enjoy my girl’s childhood more than I was at the time. So, I cut down. I cut down on the amount of work I do, and I was going in my career at a much slower pace than I would have been. Now she has gone to school. Give her a few years and she is not going to want to spend any time with me anymore. That would be a time for me to again put my foot on the accelerator in terms of my career and focus more on that.

That was my choice, and I would have never criticised anyone else’s choices. But it is important to be open to a younger generation about the choices we need to make.

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