I never thought I would be a lawyer. I’m from Amsterdam, and I did a student traineeship in 1991, which was quite a common thing for Dutch law students back then. It’s like a summer internship at a law firm. I was blown away by Clifford Chance – the dynamism, the people, the quality of the work. I just loved it. I was given the chance to apply for a job to start the year after and I got it. That was quite unusual in those days because the job market wasn’t easy.
If you’d asked me at the age of 23 or 24, I would have said I wanted to go into international relations or business. Before I studied law, I was thinking of going to a university in the US which was strong on international relations, then go and work at an international organisation. My fascination with international relations very much came into force in my former role as senior partner and now as leader of our global ESG board.
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