Jennifer Mellott, 40, Office Managing Partner at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Washington, D.C.
Practice area: Antitrust
Law school and year of graduation: Georgetown Law Center, 2008
The following has been edited for style.
How long have you been at the firm?
I have been at Freshfields since April 2013.
What year were you promoted/elected to your current role?
I became the office managing partner in May 2023.
Were you a partner at another firm before joining your present firm? If so, which one, how long were you there and when did you leave?
How would you describe your career trajectory (was it organic or an active pursuit)?
In my career as an antitrust lawyer, I’ve always sought out new experiences and opportunities to learn about different legal regimes. At Freshfields, I have made the active choice to spend time in lots of different offices, which is central to our firm ethos and how we operate globally—encouraging interconnection between offices. The year I joined the firm (2013), I spent six months in Hong Kong and then I was based in Brussels for six months in 2016. From 2018 to 2022, I returned to Brussels and practiced European competition law.
When I decided to do that, it was partly to learn how to advise clients on multinational competition issues and develop dual experience in both the U.S. and EU processes, but also to build my profile at the firm and build connections with people in other offices. When I returned to the U.S. in 2022 we’d embarked on this really incredible growth trajectory. I really wanted to be part of that, and taking on a leadership role in the D.C. office was a great chance to be part of shaping the growth and investment that’s happening here.
What do you think was the deciding point for the firm in electing/promoting you to your current role? Was it your performance on a specific case? A personality trait? Making connections with the right people?
I think the time that I spent in Brussels paved the way to becoming office managing partner. It helped build a strong bridge between Europe and the U.S., which is important to the global mindset of the firm.
I’ve always been someone in the firm who is focused on bringing people together, building teams, kind of creating harmony among practice groups, offices, and regions. During the period when the firm was selecting the next managing partner in Washington, we were in the midst of a period where we’ve grown at an incredible rate, including through lateral hires. With that growth came a the need to effectively integrate lateral hires to bring the old and new parts of the firm together. The firm’s senior leadership team and my colleagues in D.C. felt that I was well placed to do that, given that I’ve always prioritized creating teams, continuity and connectivity in any office where I’ve been based.
What unique challenges do you face as it relates to your role?
The most challenging thing about my role is managing how quickly we are growing and making sure that everybody feels like they have a place and role to play in the US and in the firm globally. With the rapid pace we are moving at, it is really important to ensure that everyone is along for the ride, and everyone feels empowered and energized to contribute to the firm’s growth. It’s challenging, but it is critical that we get it right.
What’s the best piece of advice you give to someone who wants to rise up the ranks to lead an office?
My best piece of advice is to not shy away from getting involved with conflict or offering to improve something that you know could be done better. If you are aware of areas for improvement and you can play a role in that, speak up. I think a lot of people don’t get involved in something unless they are asked, but I have found it’s always served me and my career and put me in leadership positions—like office managing partner—by identifying and getting involved proactively when I see a problem that I can help resolve.
Who had the greatest influence in your career that helped propel you to your current role?
I would say Alan Ryan, a fellow antitrust partner in our Silicon Valley office, who I worked closely with when I was based in Brussels and was really encouraging of me when I decided to move over there and when I returned to the U.S. He is someone who has moved around into different offices and leadership roles through his time at Freshfields and has been mentor to me as I pursued different opportunities at the firm. When I took on the office managing partner role, he was the one to tell me “You’re not too junior for this. You’re the best possible person to do this.”
How do you utilize technology to benefit the firm/practice and/or business development?
I think in a post-COVID world it is very easy to hide behind technology and lose that connectivity with people because we only see them behind screens or on Teams chats. I’ve spent a lot of time in the past few years thinking about how to use technology in a way that brings us together and doesn’t kind of silo people. I use technology just one piece in the connection of a team whether it’s working on matter or collaborating on a business development initiative. While technology is of course a great business tool to share information, it also be used to share a gif or build a connection with a colleague. It’s all about finding the balance.
Knowing what you know now, what advice would you give to your younger self and/or what would you do differently?
There were probably points in my career I was content to have promotions or things placed on hold and think I will just wait another year, when I should have been more persistent. I wish that I understood earlier how much value I have to add and pushed for some of those things to happen faster. It is definitely difficult in the moment going through the process and wondering if listening to advice to wait a little bit longer is the right thing to do, but I think I could’ve probably been more of an advocate for myself.
Do you have a prediction on how the legal industry will evolve over the next several years?
We are in a significant period of change within the legal industry where clients are putting more and more pressure on their external counsel to deliver top quality work product, adopt innovative technology and delivery models, and lower costs. The problems that our clients are facing are multinational and multifaceted, so as lawyers we need to be able to look at the same angle through the lenses of multiple jurisdictions and multiple legal disciplines. We are seeing and I think we will continue to see more of a stratification among the truly elite global firms who are capable of this advice that crosses borders and crosses practice areas.
Please share with us any firm or industry initiatives that you are working on as well as the impact you hope to achieve.
In D.C., we have historically been a smaller office, but we’ve grown significantly in the last few years. A lot of the work I’m doing is to put structures and committees in place to make people feel involved. Things like creating a social committee, making sure we have standing partner meetings and other intentional efforts to help transition what was once a relatively small office with 6 partners to a 20-partner office. We want to ensure that everyone is engaged and no one is falling through the cracks. On a firmwide level, I’ve also been involved in our U.S. growth strategy and lateral integration of new partners.
What career advice do you wish more people would ask you? (e.g. “if you just listened to me you could have…”)
Over the years, I have worked with a lot of people who are really outstanding technical lawyers, but don’t think that the teaching, training, office engagement part of the job is important. They’re very focused on technical skills and client facing work, but not on the responsibility that comes as you get more senior for running the business and developing the next generation of lawyers. That is something that will prevent somebody from becoming a partner or real leader at their firm. I would encourage more people to focus on that even from a more junior level because while it is a partner responsibility, it is important to do well before that.