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.
I never thought I’d spent 30 years at one organisation. If you had asked my friends at university, they would have said: ‘We won’t see Jeroen in the Netherlands for the next decade!’ They thought I would be like the Gen Z and Millennials we now hear about, always job hopping. But that didn’t happen, because I got such a variety of work, opportunities and continuous challenges at CC.
I come from a family of entrepreneurs. My mother was a serial entrepreneur, so I’ve been brought up with that spirit. She was running a business well into her eighties and is a huge doer. I was very close once or twice during my studies to starting my own business with friends but never did. It’s interesting though, because throughout my career, I’ve worked with a lot of startup businesses.
My father was a business executive and an inspiration for his integrity and calm. You’ve got these English posters saying: ‘Keep Calm and Carry On.’ Whenever I read them, I think of my dad. He passed away 25 years ago and, although I’m not as calm as he was, I learned some of that.
I never thought I’d spend 30 years at one organisation. My friends thought I would be like the Gen Z and Millennials we now hear about, always job hopping. But that didn’t happen, because I got such a variety of work, opportunities and continuous challenges at Clifford Chance.
When I was a trainee, I worked on the copyright case of American soap opera The Bold and the Beautiful. The show was big in the Netherlands. A journalist had gone over to the US, watched the series on TV there, returned to the Netherlands and wrote a book about it. This was pre-internet, so the book was giving away all the plot and the cliffhangers. I was in my mid-20s, and it gave me a couple of minutes of fame in the Netherlands. I would be recognised. I went to the hairdressers, and I’d be asked: ‘Are you the guy from The Bold and the Beautiful?’ My advocacy in court was shown on the TV and played on the radio stations. I remember driving in the car and, in between songs, the radio playing a snippet of my oral pleadings. That was pretty fun as a junior. I remember my managing partner saying, ‘Jeroen, that’s all good, but what goes up must come down!’
I’m a litigator by background. You get to know a lot because in the Netherlands, we do our own advocacy; there is no barrister and solicitor distinction. If you’ve got to argue a case for an airline or energy company, you have to really get to know the client and delve into their business. I’ve always loved that. I’ve had lots of leadership roles at CC too, which has given me a lot of management experience, alongside being a litigator.
I’ve travelled an awful lot. I lived in London for a year in the late 1990s, and now I’ve been living in London for a few years. I haven’t lived in that many countries, but I’ve visited most of our offices around the world, and worked with colleagues everywhere.
I’m an ambassador for our culture and created our code of conduct. I’ve helped to embed that. I’ve done over 100 workshops over the past year and a half, across offices and functions in the firm. I love the cultural differences.
I love being able to speak to clients in their own language. I’m a real European and speak several languages.
I’ve been brought up to look for opportunities in problems. I don’t see challenges as a negative. I’ve had so many challenges in my work trying to do new things, but I like getting outside of my comfort zone. As a lawyer, certainly if you want to be in a leadership position, you need a healthy dose of resilience. There are good days and bad days, but I do genuinely love going to work.
Just before the global financial crisis, I acted on the biggest takeover battle in Europe, of ABN AMRO. I acted for a UK bank, and it was a fascinating case because it was so high-profile. I remember going to a court hearing on Saturday morning and not being able to get in because there were so many camera crews. I worked very closely with the now-retired CC partner Simon Davis, who was very close to that client. I have always been good at giving advice in English, but Simon would just tweak it slightly, and know exactly what the client needed. Our combination was very powerful.
Simon Davis encouraged me to run for senior partner. I walked into his room one day and said: ‘Simon, I assume you’re going to stand for senior partner?’ I thought he was the perfect person for the role. He said, ‘I’m not, but you are.’ He put the idea in my head and I got elected, thanks to him believing in me. He’s become a good friend and has always been very supportive.
I’ve had numerous teams, and I hope they would all think of me as having high energy, as being entrepreneurial and inclusive. I’m demanding but compassionate. I like to think I’m a friendly person to work with, as I don’t get upset or angry quickly. I’m driven and collaborative. I’m good at bringing people together.
I’d be asked: ‘Are you the guy from The Bold and the Beautiful?’ My advocacy in court was shown on the TV and played on the radio. I remember driving in the car and the radio playing a snippet of my oral pleadings.
Regrets are wasted energy. I’m proud of what I’ve achieved. I was the first non-English lawyer and litigator in the history of the firm to effectively become chair of CC. I can’t really say that I should have taken a different path or done things differently. One of the reasons I won that election was because I’ve had such a variety of experience. That is really beneficial when you’re going for senior partner. You’re talking with people on the transactional side in different industries. We used to call them ‘T-shaped’ partners at CC, which is an old term, but it meant being very good at your job but being broader as well.
Over the next few years, the big question is AI. People are getting really worried about it, including some of the godfathers of AI. There was a recent case in the US where a lawyer relied on ChatGPT to do some research and it came up with a beautiful list of cases. He then went back to ChatGPT, rather than checking them for himself, to ask if they were real cases.
It turned out that none of them actually existed! It’s a good warning to be responsible in the way you use technology.
There’s an increasing pressure to be an ethical and responsible business. Ethics have existed for longer than ESG or corporate responsibility, but what it means to be an ethical and responsible business is changing. There are more demands on the world of business to contribute to being a force for good. That’s going to be a greater focus, including for law firms. You’ll see it in our clients, the regulators and in the people we hire.
I’ve been brought up to look for opportunities in problems. I don’t see challenges as a negative. I’ve had so many challenges in my work trying to do new things, but I like getting outside of my comfort zone.
I’ve made more than a few mistakes in my career, and everyone should. I once walked into the office of Peter Bayliff, who was the English managing partner of CC’s Amsterdam office when I first started. I was a bit shaky and asked him how I should have handled something; what I should have done differently. But he never pointed the finger at me, he treated it as a learning experience. He was a lot of fun, very human, a leader and a role model.
I once spent ten days in a silence retreat. Although I am a pretty social person and spend a lot of time with people, my kids gave me this as a present and said: ‘This is probably going to be good for you.’ I stayed in a hut on a mountain, not speaking to anyone, which was a great test of resilience!
I like to travel outside of my job too. My brother and mother live in the south of Spain in a place called Tarifa, which is like the windsurfing and kitesurfing centre of Europe. I’ve got lots to do and I’m not quickly bored, although being bored is not a bad thing for a person sometimes.
Jeroen Ouwehand is a litigation partner at Clifford Chance, head of the firm’s global ESG board, and its former senior partner
Portrait: Brendan Lea