The Real Lawyer: Lucy Fato (Part 1)

In this episode, Lucy Fato, a renowned corporate lawyer, shares her inspiring journey from her first-generation Italian-American upbringing in Pittsburgh to becoming a leader in corporate law. Lucy reflects on her early career experiences, including working as a phlebotomist and in retail finance, and how witnessing racial injustice ignited her passion for law. She discusses her time at the University of Pittsburgh Law School, her transition to corporate law at Davis Polk, and the invaluable lessons she learned while navigating the fast-paced world of capital markets. Lucy’s story highlights the power of mentorship, resilience, and finding purpose in unexpected places.

Stay tuned for Part 2, where Lucy delves into her move from law firm partner to in-house leadership.

Transcript

Speaker 2 (00:04.706)

Welcome to the Real Lawyer podcast, where we get real about life, working in law, and everything in between. I'm your host, Joyce Sophia Hsu, and our guest today is Ms. Lucy Fado, one of the country's most prominent corporate lawyers, and also one of my favorite people. Lucy was a homegrown capital markets partner at the law firm of Davis Polk and Wardwell.

and she has served as the top lawyer at some of our country's biggest companies, including SMP and AIG. And most recently, Lucy has taken on the role of general counsel and corporate secretary at Seaport Entertainment.

Speaker 2 (00:55.928)

Hi Lucy, welcome to the real lawyer.

It's so nice to be here. Thank you for having me.

Well, Lucy, it means so much to me to have you on our show. I was very fortunate to get to work with you and get to know you when I was just a junior associate at Davis Polk. And you have been such a great mentor and a role model to me for what, over two decades now.

well, that's all very kind of you to say and I remember it. Well, I remember it. I just can't believe how many years have gone by. But those were definitely some fun days for sure.

Yeah, I remember one of the reasons we connected immediately was that we shared a connection to Western Pennsylvania. I landed in Indiana, Pennsylvania when I was first arriving in the US from China. And you grew up nearby in Pittsburgh, PA. So you've shared with me some of your experiences growing up. But I don't know if I ever

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heard the whole story about how you ended up going to law school. So could you tell us about that today?

Sure, I'd be happy to tell you the story. There is a story and I have spoken about it from time to time, but not many people are aware of what really prompted me to go to law school. So I was born and raised in Pittsburgh and my parents and sisters were Italian immigrants, so I was first generation. And after high school, I went to undergrad at the University of Pittsburgh.

and was a business and economics major. And I had to work my way through school. got grants, I paid whatever tuition I had to pay. I took out some student loans, but I always worked my way through school. And my first two years in college, I worked at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center in Oakland, which was right where the Pitt campus is.

And I spent two years as a phlebotomist, which was drawing blood from people where I would go early in the mornings to draw blood, because that's usually when you get blood drawn when you're in a hospital and then all the tests come back by the time the doctors come by to see you and they want to see all the results. So would get up very early and go do that for three hours. And I would work there on weekends as well, because I got paid time and a half or double time sometimes.

I worked a lot, but I decided that medical school was not, or something in that field was not really what I was interested in. My parents were hoping I was going to go to medical school because my oldest sister became a doctor and once an immigrant family has a doctor as a child, you know, nothing else matters. So, but I quickly decided that was not for me. So my junior year,

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I decided to switch and I went and got a job at Kaufman's, which was a beautiful department store in downtown Pittsburgh, which later turned into a Macy's and is now closed, unfortunately. But back in the day, it was like the beautiful historic building and it's still really like a landmark in Pittsburgh. It's a beautiful, beautiful building.

going there during the holiday season and it was a special treat. It was quite an experience. Yeah.

It was, it was always beautifully decorated and I thought I might be interested in retail. It was something I always liked. I always liked going shopping and I liked clothes and things like that. And so I thought, why not go work in a beautiful store and, you know, still be able to pay my tuition and get exposed to an industry that I actually like. So I did that and I had a really

amazing experience with a woman in the HR department who I wish I could remember her name, but she's one of these people that I think that we've all had them where they sort of come into your life, even if it's for a brief time and they really set you on a path that you don't realize at the time is going to position you for something else in the future. And I just thought I would be a salesperson, you know, selling clothes or selling shoes, I was going to work part time. And instead, she spent 20 minutes with me.

learned I was business and economics major. We talked a little bit about, you know, other classes I was taking in college. And at the end of it, she said, you know, I don't really think you should be a salesperson. We have an opening in our new accounts department that's part of our finance team. And I think given your interest in business and finance, that would be a better place for you. And so she placed me in this department where when people go to a store and they open up instant credit,

Speaker 1 (05:57.802)

and usually get a discount. The salesperson calls to an office upstairs somewhere, some back office, who knows where they are now. I doubt they're in the same building anymore, probably some call center. And they would give us all the information and we would run credit checks on the people and decide if they should get an account or not. And if so, how much, what their credit limit should be. So I was doing that and I really enjoyed it. The CFO sat.

like one section over from me. So I saw a lot of finance people and I was becoming more and more convinced that maybe I would get an MBA or maybe I would work at Kaufman's in the finance department full time for a year or two and then go get an MBA. And then the summer before my senior year, a friend of one of my sisters, they had gone to high school together and my sisters are five and six years older than me. they were.

their friends were all older and one of my sister's friends came to visit us just on a random day in the summer. We hadn't seen her in a long time and she came by and she started talking to me and asked me what I wanted to do when I graduated. And I said, told her what I was thinking in terms of business and finance, but I said, to be honest, I'm still not really sure. And she said, have you ever thought about going to law school? And I said, no, never thought about it.

And she said, well, you might want to think about it. It's a great education. You learn a lot. You don't even have to be a lawyer after law school if you don't want to be. It's just a great foundation. You learn a lot about reading and writing, advocating. You learn a lot about our Constitution and our country and our country's history. You learn a lot about civil rights and other things.

And she was not convincing me that that was something I wanted to do, especially because it was three years and the thought of being in school for another three years was not terribly appealing at the time. Now I wish I could be in school forever, but back then I was anxious to get out in the workplace. So she was very generous and said, why don't you come and shadow me for a day and see what I do? Because I'm a lawyer. I did not even realize she had gone to law school and become a lawyer. That's how long it had been since we had seen her.

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said, oh, I had no idea you were a lawyer. I said, sure, I'd be happy to come shadow you one day. So she told me where to meet her, which turned out to be at the courthouse in downtown Pittsburgh, which is again, a very historic building, very old. It's actually where the jail is attached to it. Where people go when they're, you know, arrested and very, old school. And it turned out

which I did not know in advance, it turned out that she was a public defender. And I was like, wow, that's kind of interesting. I didn't really know what that was, but I figured it out pretty quickly. And she took me in the back room with her, the holding cell where she was gonna meet most of her clients for that day. They were, you know, there were probably 16 cases that day. And her job was to show that there was no probable cause to arrest them. And if they won, they went home. And if they lost, they would

be assigned another public defender that would then take them through to either a plea bargain or trial. So she had a very discreet mandate. Was there probable cause or not to arrest the person? I, course, at the time had no idea what that meant. And so as I sat there in the courtroom, I was just stunned. It was just the judge. It was, she was the public defender, her client, a prosecutor, and the police officer was the only witness, the police officer that arrested the person.

So it wasn't some long drawn out process. It was a fairly quick process. That's why she was able to get through 15, 16, 17 cases a day. And so the first thing I noticed was that all of her clients were young men, mostly men of color, no women. And the next thing I noticed was that she was winning almost all of her cases.

And it took me a while to catch on to why she was winning because she was talking about a lot of things I just wasn't didn't have a lot of familiarity with like Miranda rights and search and seizure. And, know, why did you approach the person to begin with and what led you to then search their car and what about this and what about that? And she was basically, you know, going through a whole legal analysis that showed that there had either been no probable cause to go up to the person to begin with.

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or even if there was, there was no probable cause to search their car where maybe they found marijuana or something else that ultimately led to their arrest that had nothing to do with why they had been approached to begin with. And so I just was sort of stunned and shocked and fascinated and watching the judge and, who was very efficient and getting through these cases very quickly. And then she lost her first case.

And she turned to me and I still get chills to this day when I talk about this. She turned to me and she looked me straight in the eye. And this was now remember in, I hate to date myself, but I will. This was in the summer of 1987. And she looked at me and she said, this is what happens to young men of color in our society. They're in the wrong place at the wrong time.

they get arrested for all the wrong reasons and without any real civil rights. And if I'm not able to show that, they will now have a record. And they may go on to plea and serve no time in jail if they're a first time offender or who knows, they'll go to trial, maybe they win, maybe they don't, but it doesn't matter. They now have a record. It's gonna make it hard for them to get a job. It will make it hard for them to finish school because

people will know that they had been arrested and they tend to become repeat offenders. And eventually they end up in jail and it's just a cycle that starts that they can never really get themselves out of. And so that's what I do what I do to try to protect as many of these young men. And if they've done something wrong, that's one thing, but in most cases they were in the wrong place at the wrong time because of the color of their skin. And it was just such

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1 (12:30.208)

an enlightening experience for me. I really felt like I had been struck by lightning. And I said, literally in that moment, I said, I'm going to law school. This is what I want to do.

Wow, what a story, Lucy. So your professional aspirations went from sales to finance, and then all of a sudden to becoming a lawyer.

Yeah. And then of course, I end up at Davis Polk after graduation and I become a capital markets lawyer and I don't do any of the things that motivated me, but I do a lot now. I do a lot of pro bono work and I've done it for many years and I tend to focus on criminal and social justice reform and prison reform. And I think it's because it takes me all the way back to that summer in 1987, which is what really motivated me to go to law school. And I think.

I've always had a very strong sense of right and wrong and black and white. And I think people always tell me I have this strong sense of justice. And when I see injustices, whether it's legal injustice or just something in the office that doesn't seem right or sticking up for people that maybe are underrepresented.

and I just think that's been with me my whole life. I don't really know why. I think it was that way. Even when I was a young child growing up, I always tended to be friends with people that didn't have a lot of friends or were bullied. I was never one to gravitate towards the popular people. just didn't have any interest in that. I always gravitated more towards people that I always felt needed help or needed a friend.

Speaker 1 (14:14.346)

And I think that stuck with me throughout my entire career.

Right. Wow. Yeah. I got chills when you were sharing that experience. I came to the States from China in 1988 and your sister's friend, she was already in the boots on the ground fighting racial profiling with her work from day to day. That's really incredible.

Well, the other thing that's interesting about this woman is that my middle sister and I, we went to a private all girls high school on full academic scholarships. My parents could never have afforded to pay for us to go to this school, but my middle sister got a scholarship. That's where she met this friend who came from a, you know, at least a middle, if not upper middle class family. She went to a private.

She became a lawyer. She's white. And yet, back then, she dedicated herself to this cause. And I've never had a chance to ask her, you know, what was it that motivated you? Because you don't, you know, from the outside looking in, you didn't have any of the hallmarks of someone that would follow that path and have that be your passion at the time.

And so I've never had an opportunity. subsequently got married to a German man and moved to Germany. So she's lived in Europe for a very, very long time. So I've never seen her since that day in that courthouse. I have not seen her. My sister has, and my sister is still in touch with her, but I have not had a chance to speak to her to ask her what motivated her to do what she did. And someday I would like to do that to understand what drove her to do that.

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at a time when not many people were talking about those kinds of things.

Yeah, you know, before we came on the show to record, you and I were talking about my experience with angels and angelic energy and listening to you talk about this family friend that make me feel like she's definitely one of these angels that shows up along the way and obviously made such a big difference in your trajectory, in your life path.

Well, I think when I look back on my career, I think there were several people like that. I didn't necessarily know it at the time or recognize it at the time, but it's like the woman in the HR department at Kaufman's. spent 20 minutes with me. Like I said, I wish I could remember her name so I could find her. She put me in that role, which I think was very not at all what I was expecting or asked for.

but she took the time to put me in a role. And then fast forward, one of my general counsel roles was at Standard & Poor's, the rating agency. And I went in there to clean up a big financial crisis mess. And look, I was a capital markets lawyer, so I understood about ratings and rating agencies and what they did and how they did it. So it wasn't like I was a novice, but I really learned a lot about credit ratings and...

what they mean, at least on an individual basis from that time at Kaufman's, but I do think there are many people that have come in and out of my life, some for longer periods than others, some just brief interactions that when I look back really made a lot of change. And so I think for me and set me on a path that I would never have never picked on my own. So I tell people.

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that they saw something in me that I didn't see myself. And so when I talk to younger people and others who asked me for advice, I try to do the same thing. I try to help them understand what I see as what they can bring to the table, which is not often how they see themselves.

Yeah, well, you've done exactly that for me, giving me the support and confidence boosts over the years when I really needed them the most. And for that, I'm just so grateful. Now, let's circle back to law school. You were inspired by your sister's friend and then you went to law school just full of passion and energy. What was that experience like?

Was any part of it unexpected for you?

Well, I went into law school really with no expectations. Because again, I had never really thought about law school. And by the time I decided to go, I didn't really have time to apply to a lot of, so I only applied to Pitt Law School. That was it. And I actually applied to the JD MBA program. I was gonna get a joint degree, which I ended up not doing because I ended up liking law school so much, I decided to forego the MBA, which, you know.

Sometimes I regret, but sometimes I think I would have gone on a different path because the Davis Polk summer associate position probably wouldn't have happened the way it did. I wouldn't have started because I would graduated a year later. And so, you know, I would have met different people along the way. So I'm a believer that every everything happens for a reason.

Speaker 1 (19:41.806)

But I do think it's why I gravitated towards the corporate world because I did have this business and economics major and had had an interest in getting an MBA at some point. So I think that's why I ended up doing what I did in law. But when I went to law school, I loved it. I loved every minute of it, especially my first year of law school. And I think it was a combination of one, I didn't work.

I said to myself, I'm not going to work when I'm in law school because I have to focus 100 % of my energy on this, especially my first year, which is really, as you know, is very important in terms of how you get your first job that leads to your next one and eventually a permanent offer. And I also knew the workload would be significant. And so it wasn't like college where I could balance out what classes I took. I just knew it was going to be very, very intense.

So it was the first time for me that I was able to just focus on school and my academics and making friends. mean, you know, the reality for me is I really don't have any friends from college because I didn't really participate. I didn't really have a normal college experience. I worked so much. So my friends were people that I worked with who tended to be older. They were dental students, nursing students, people that had part-time jobs that were going into medical professions. And that became my

group of friends in college and they were all older than me. So, you I didn't go to college parties or I didn't join a sorority. I didn't have any of that. But so when I finally went to law school, I finally had a group of friends that were all going through the same thing with me. And we had study groups and we would take breaks together. We would study in the library together. We would help prepare each other for tests. We would take a break to watch Steeler games on Sunday, which was always fun.

And those people actually became closer friends of mine than anybody I had ever met in college. And still to this day, some of them I'm still in touch with and know and consider very close friends. But I had wonderful professors. I did everything I could in terms of learning about the constitution. I took con law. I took obviously civil procedure. I eventually did criminal procedure, criminal law.

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everything around the Constitution and civil rights. When I was a third year, some of those specific classes you would take that were smaller with small groups of people were always centered around constitutional issues. Interestingly, some of my best grades were in contracts. I knew I was going to go into corporate law. didn't know at that point it would be capital markets, but I had made a decision.

after my summer at Davis Polk that I wanted to be a corporate lawyer and not a litigator. really? Yeah, my summer at Davis Polk, I got put on a couple of IPOs and a couple of other interesting projects in the corporate world. really didn't, think, I'm not even sure I got any litigation assignments. I mean, if I did, it was maybe one to help write a memo on something, but what I learned about myself is that I liked working on transactions.

I liked things that moved at a certain pace. Litigation tends to drag out. I don't really have a lot of patience for that. The thought of working on a litigation matter for seven years was like not appealing to me at all. Whereas, you know, in capital markets, things would happen in months instead of years. And I think I ultimately picked capital markets because I found it to be a very collaborative environment. Everybody was interested in getting to the same result.

Which was whatever the transaction was which was usually a capital raising activity of some point You know at some point and on some level and so it was all very positive The bankers wanted it to get done the company wanted it to get done. Everybody was moving towards the same goal Whereas when I did other Rotations in like &A for example, I found it to be very adversarial and aggressive and

people arguing just for the sake of arguing. I watched people argue and negotiate over commas and semicolons and I was just like, really? I don't think that's for me. And so I think that's why I ended up in capital markets is I like being part of a team. like working towards, I'm not afraid to take on hard things and work on hard projects and have to problem solve. actually like complexity, but I don't like working on things where everybody's just.

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fighting all the time and adversarial and maybe it's a hostile transaction or even if it's not, people are arguing over a lot of different issues. And I just didn't find that in capital markets. I don't have a lot of patience for the small stuff. Like I don't sweat the small stuff. For me, it's about what's the big issue? What's the problem that needs to be solved? How do we get this done? And let's just not be silly about it because, you know.

People think they need, know, everything's a point and they need to get as many points as they can. I just, I don't have a lot of patience for that.

So then did you do capital markets work at Dave's Polk your entire time there?

Well, when I first started, we were required to rotate through at least three different groups. And so my first rotation was in credit, working on big giant credit agreements. And the clearest memories I have of that was standing in front of a copier late at night, making tons of copies of 150 page credit. You know, we didn't have email back then and you know, none of the tools that people have today.

And so I would literally, cause you know, I am sort of type A and a little bit OCD sometimes. And so I had to do it myself to make sure they were all perfect and the flag, the right signature page. Cause there were always like 20 banks involved. And so I would stand in front of the copier and make all these copies, call the mail room, beg them to have the FedEx person stay. Cause inevitably the printer would jam and you'd have to fix it. And you know, it would take a little longer. And so I remember a lot of phone calls to the mail room saying,

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keep the guy there, do whatever you have to do, I promise I'll make it up to you guys. Then I'd like send a box of chocolates the next day to the mail room. So I learned a lot in that rotation, but it was a little too boring for me. Again, it was like just covenant after covenant and just a bit tedious.

But I found the people in that department to be brilliant. And so I felt like I learned a lot, but it wasn't necessarily well suited to my personality. Then I did an &A rotation, which again, I learned a lot from in terms of negotiating skills and how to get to the answer that you want to in a constructive way. But I also saw a lot of people just arguing for the sake of arguing on things that just didn't matter.

and so I saw there was a lot of ego involved and I just, that did not appeal to me. and then I did a capital markets rotation, having had the benefit of doing some capital markets work during my summer at Davis Polk. And that solidified my interest, in capital markets. And then I was actually asked to do a fourth rotation, which I'm so happy I did, which was in, employee benefits and compensation.

And so I learned a lot about executive compensation, about proxy statements and things that I use to this day as a general counsel focused on exec comp, proxy disclosure, ISS, Glass Lewis, shareholder engagement, governance best practices. So a lot of that was sort of, you know, started in that rotation. And so it helped me in my capital markets work to understand the nuances of

compensation issues and employment issues. And I use a lot of those skills to this day. So I was very happy that I did that fourth rotation and then eventually went into capital markets permanently. By the time I was a third year associate and that was it, stayed, became a partner and was there as a partner for all in 14 years and five as a partner. Almost all in capital markets.

Speaker 2 (28:09.688)

So when you first joined Davis Polk, did you have already the goal of making partner? was your primary motivation at the time?

I have to tell you, Joyce, when I think back to the things I did, I had no idea what I was doing. mean, honestly, I was just a girl from Pittsburgh with immigrant parents who didn't speak English. I I have no idea how I ended up where I am today. I I know it was a lot of hard, I worked hard and I know people liked working with me for the most part, not everyone, but most people did. Not everybody likes people who are truth tellers.

want to make sure things get done right. And even though I wouldn't sweat all the small stuff the way some people did, I was pretty meticulous in my work. Like typos drive me crazy. You know, I would read prospectuses 10 times to make sure everything was right and there were no mistakes in it. I took pride in my work, no matter what it took. Like I took pride in the fact that I don't think there was ever a prospectus that I worked on in 14 years that had no typos or

weird page breaks because I just took that extra time to make sure I went through it all.

Yeah, but I, I remember working with you. I was doing, equity derivatives. It was kind of tangential to capital markets, but I do remember, working on some deals with you and you always struck me as someone who was super positive and, you know, just had this uplifting and optimistic personality, but at the same time you were so efficient and so sharp.

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And you definitely caught every single typo there was in the doc.

I still do to this day!

I'm sure you do. think it's just in your nature. just have this, you know.

I can't help myself. I just, can't help myself. don't know where it comes from, but I don't know if it was my Davis Polk training. mean, you know, there were some partners in the credit group in particular, my first rotation that, you know, some of them we used to refer to as like going to the dentist when you go to a meeting with them, cause it was like so painful. but I learned from those people. I learned that like being careful matters and you know, sometimes

a typo or a missing word makes a huge difference. Like sometimes the word and can have legal implications versus or, right? so you have to really focus on that. And it's not because you're being type A, it's just that it really makes a difference if you say and versus or on something.

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as always.

Speaker 1 (31:00.738)

So I just, felt very lucky that I always worked with people that gave me a lot of instruction, but then also as I got more senior, they kind of backed away and let me take the lead. And I was very fortunate. worked, I just watched the other night. I think it was Saturday night. I watched the Martha Stewart documentary that's on Netflix and I worked on her IPO.

when I was at Davis Polk. was the underwriters council, not her council, but got to meet her, got to spend time with her, got to do diligence with her. And I was just so impressed by her. I mean, this is a woman who was very much in charge of her business. She was very hands-on and there had always been stories about, it's not really her. She has a staff of people. It's like, no, this is all Martha. Yes, she has a staff of people to execute, but it's-

all her and talk about a type A like everything needs to be just right. mean her phrase, which you see in the documentary and I remember it from when I did her IPO is perfectly perfect. Everything has to be perfectly perfect for Martha. And I just remember her being so nice, lovely, very friendly.

She was thrilled to be doing this IPO. She was eager to learn about the process because she was outside of her comfort zone. I remember her sending everybody a nice note afterwards with a gift, a personalized gift. I've run into her a few times since then and I remind her that I was one of the young lawyers on her IPO and she always has a kind word.

always had something nice to say about that time. I mean, obviously she went on to have some pretty amazing difficulties, but watching her documentary brought back a lot of great memories. And I had a very, very proud moment. There was a section in the documentary where when she started to have some of her legal issues,

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they brought up and highlighted language from the risk factor and the prospectus about the company's reliance on Martha and that if something ever happened to her, either if she died or something reputationally that the stock could suffer. And I remember writing that risk factor. I wrote that and I remember sharing it with her lawyers who were hemming and hawing because no one wanted to show something to Martha that would be the number one risk factor.

You wrote that. Wow.

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that basically said, be buyer beware, right? This company is very dependent on this one person. I mean, now it's pretty commonplace to do this when you have a key, you know, key man or key person risk. And, and I remember having to talk to a number of people about it to say, and even litigators at Davis Polk to say, I think this is what we need. And they said, yes, you're right. Should be the number one risk factor. And, and it did its job when, when, when

stuff happened, it prevented a lot of lawsuits that might have otherwise happened, but for the very, very clear disclosure about the company's reliance on her and her reputation. So that was a very unexpected little proud moment for me watching her documentary. And I still think the world of her and admire her and had not realized at the time that she was the first self-made female billionaire.

I did not know that either.

She was the first in America, first self-made female billionaire. And she was very quickly brought down after that.

Yeah, but your work, you know, actually protected the company.

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protected the company and the underwriters who were my clients.

Right, right.

So that was a very nice little unexpected validation of the work that I did. And I still remember sitting at the printer, you know, writing that and wordsmithing it with other people and making sure we had explained it to Martha so she understood the purpose of it. And she was very smart. She got it. She didn't oppose it at all. Once she understood why we were doing it, that it was an insurance policy and basically meant to protect her and the company.

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Good. No eagle involved. No.

I had a great experience with her. Nothing but positivity, gracious, very grateful for the hard work that people were doing. And I think in some ways she was in her element because while we didn't know how to bake things like she did or like set a nice table, we were all like type A personalities, know, reading

scrubbing the prospectus to make sure there were no typos. And I think on that level, she connected with all of us because we were very, you know, we took pride in our work and we wanted everything to be perfectly perfect because that's what we thought our job was. And I think that resonated with her. So I think that's why in the end she wrote everybody, you know, an individual note with a gift to thank them for the work that they did. Cause she was.

She was a very smart woman. She saw what it took to get an IPO done and especially a high profile one like hers. And so I think given her own experiences and the way she deals in her own world, she respected the way we approached her transaction.

Yeah, that was definitely a very, very high profile IPO. And how awesome was it to be the lead capital markets partner on that deal? You've clearly done a lot early on at Davis Polk and you were a superstar capital markets partner. So I'm wondering as you look back on those years and those deals, are there people who come to mind as

Speaker 2 (37:18.126)

having had a big influence on you as a lawyer.

Jeffrey Small was the partner who really taught me how to be decisive and go with my gut sometimes because there's not always a clear answer. And he also taught me how to delegate. In fact, he told me I had to delegate because I was always holding on to a lot of things. And he said, Lucy, if you want to be a partner, you have to learn how to delegate. You you're a good teacher. People like working with you and you need to give, you know,

you should not be doing closing memos as an AP or associate. You need to start giving those to somebody else to do. And so he taught me how to delegate and it was hard and I still have trouble delegating and I still think back to those conversations he and I had all the time. But cause you know, Jeffrey was the best delegator ever. We all knew that and loved that about him.

very, very special person in my career who I still think about a lot. You know, work was for a long time for me, work was my whole life. You know, I didn't get married until I was later, at least to my current husband. was married once when I was young, but it was short, short lived. and so work really became my life and the people I worked with became my friends and I'm still in touch even with bankers that were my clients. I'm still friends with them and in touch with them and have dinners with them.

We haven't worked together in decades, but yet we've still remained friends because it was such an important part of our lives and important part of our careers. And so you just bond with people in those kinds of formative years in a way that you don't otherwise, if you're more senior in your career, you've moved around a bit or you move locations and you've lived in different places, but.

Speaker 1 (39:17.622)

We all sort of worked and lived in New York and we still do for the most part. And so we've been a part of each other's lives for 30 plus years.

Speaker 2 (39:34.594)

That concludes part one of my conversation with Lucy Fatil. Tune in on Wednesday to hear about Lucy's exciting transition from an equity partner at one of the country's most prestigious law firms to top legal positions at some of the country's biggest corporations. Until then, be well and be happy.