Living Abroad: How working overseas can change your view of home

Home can be a tricky word for those who’ve wandered.? I am writing this from my new “home” state of Colorado where I moved in 2022 after spending 15 years in Southeast Asia working as an attorney.? Since being back in the U.S., I’ve met a number of people who mention that they “wish they had lived overseas” or “want to live abroad someday”.? After meeting a couple of very eager and interested young lawyers at a law conference who were curious about the “how” I worked abroad in law, I thought I’d share my experience for informational and possibly motivational purposes.? The TL;DR: there are so many opportunities if you know where to look; and if you have the chance to live abroad and you asked me if you should go, I’d say take it if you can.

Mine is one of those “in the right place at the right time” kinds of stories coupled with either courage or craziness – perhaps a mixture of both – to follow a job offer located in a country to which I’d never been.? At the time my overseas opportunity arose, I was practicing family law (divorces, adoptions, domestic violence trials) for a law firm in New Jersey.? It was 2006 and I wasn’t seeing family law as my long-term legal career, and I was anxious about being pigeon-holed if I stayed in it too long.? Living overseas was always a dream of mine, but I was in a legal practice area that doesn’t lend itself to an international career; and my partner was in a corporate role at a large pharmaceutical company that didn’t present international opportunities. My wanderlust had already taken me to spend a term of law school doing an exchange program in the Netherlands at the University of Nijmegen.? Along with students from all over Europe, I studied comparative constitutional law, international employment law, and other classes that piqued my interest in possibly spending more time overseas at some point.? And somehow, I ended up clerking and then falling into family law – a legal area where I felt fulfilled helping my clients through a difficult phase in their lives, though didn’t feel like it was where I was meant to stay. ?And then an opportunity of a lifetime popped up unexpectedly at a holiday party.

The party was in Bangkok, Thailand where my partner was born and raised as an expat kid, and we had traveled to visit his parents during the holidays in 2006.? While socializing with others there, we met a guy who asked us what we do in the U.S.? After mentioning we are attorneys and talking more with him, we learned he founded a boutique regional law firm with offices throughout Southeast Asia.? As our conversation went on, he said that he really needs “foreign” lawyers in his Vientiane, Laos office and asked if we’d ever consider moving overseas to work. After further conversations with the firm’s founder and waiting a few months for things to materialize, we accepted offers to be corporate and commercial legal advisers at the firm’s office in Vientiane.? Our acceptance meant I contractually committed to moving to a country I’d never even visited. ??

Picking up and moving overseas is not an easy decision.? Part of our thought process was: (i) if we didn’t take the opportunity presented, we might not have another one come up during a life phase when we had little holding us back; (ii) if the opportunity abroad doesn’t work out, we can always come back to the U.S.; and (iii) even if the adventure ended up not being successful in some way, we would have taken advantage of it and tried, remained employable, and gained some kind of international working experience in the process.? Essentially, we were young, had no kids, and didn’t have anything tying us to stay in our U.S. jobs other than the security of them.? While we wanted to start a family, we still had time biologically; we were just at the 30/early 30s mark.? It was “that time” in life where the decisions we make impact the remainder of our lives.? We chose to take the risk; put starting a family on hold for a bit; sold our house and cars and all our furniture and most of our things; put the rest in storage; packed four suitcases, our dog and cat, and headed off to Vientiane, Laos.

The experience we gained professionally and just from living abroad is priceless.? Working for a regional law firm in the Mekong region of Asia, we advised an array of clients, mostly companies looking to invest in Laos/SE Asia, but also embassies and international aid organizations; our clients came from various industry sectors – banking & finance, hydropower, mining, telecom, construction, real estate to name a few.? As our client entities were represented by foreigners from various countries throughout the world who did not speak the Lao language, we served as the bridge between the clients and the local lawyers who helped us understand the local law and work with the Lao government for the required licenses and contracts needed to establish subsidiaries and carry out projects in Laos. ?We worked from English translations of Lao laws – an incredible challenge sometimes to understand what the laws meant as the translations were not always comprehensible.? To help us work through the translations and understand intent of the legal drafters, we worked closely with a team of Lao lawyers who would cross-reference the Lao version of the laws.? Our law degrees and good standing with a state bar in the U.S. were enough to qualify us to carry out legal advisory services in Laos per the local law on foreign lawyers; of course, we could not litigate or appear in court – the firm we were with is strictly a transactional practice and Lao courts require a Lao law certification and take place only in Lao language.

After a couple years at the firm (2007-2009), my partner moved on to work in a business role for a company HQ’d in Bangkok, Thailand. We moved to Bangkok in 2009 and I transferred to the firm’s office there.? The company moved my partner back to Vientiane in 2011, then to Yangon, Myanmar in 2015, and finally back to Bangkok from 2017-2022. ?We were a “lucky” expat couple in the sense that everywhere my partner’s job took him, I could join the law firm’s local office, learn another country’s laws and continue to grow professionally.? From about 2012, I started specializing in employment law and developed an employment law practice group for the firm given that I was becoming a “regional” expert in employment laws across SE Asia.? Eventually, in 2018, I decided it was time to branch out from private practice and try some gig work with the International Labor Organization (ILO).? I did a couple projects with the ILO such as developing a rating tool to gauge compliance with labor regulations for small to medium enterprises in the garment industry.? The ILO projects were interesting, and I may have continued on with them, but for an in-house employment counsel role that popped up unexpectedly and which I couldn’t resist trying out.? The in-house world is very different from law firm practice and the experience in a fast-paced travel tech environment was invigorating.? I was the first dedicated employment counsel at an online travel accommodations company with a US parent company and employees in 20 countries.? My experience working in such an exciting industry with a culturally diverse team of colleagues in one of the greatest cities in the world, Bangkok, was simply incredible.?

Fast forward a bit and I am in a State that I always dreamed of living in – Colorado.? More on that decision to move another time.? Life in a Colorado suburb starkly contrasts with our life in a gigantic, bustling city like Bangkok.? And I love both places and experiences for what they offer.? Back to the point of this article – an overseas experience opens up perspective, expands a worldview, heightens curiosity, and instills a perpetual sense of courage and strength.? Living abroad is not always easy, but it is absolutely worth the challenges for the amount of personal and professional growth gained. If an opportunity arises, I would generally say to seize it.? If you are actively seeking such an opportunity, look across public and private sectors, companies, non-governmental organizations, embassies (foreign civil service), and leverage your network.? A few specific possibilities common for expat jobs beside law firms: United Nations, World Bank, Asian Development Bank, International Finance Corporation.? If you go abroad for some length of time – at least one year or more in my humble opinion – your definition of home may also come, as mine, with quote marks.? A number of places hold a sense of “home” for me in the world – it’s not for everyone, but if you have a pull overseas, you might find expanding your sense of home to be a compelling reason to go for it.