Hugh Hill, Class of 2008
Associate, Lovells, New York
Undergraduate: Bowdoin College (Political Science and History)
When Hugh Hill graduated from Bowdoin with a degree in history and political science, his resume already included a stint as a staffer at the Democratic National Committee for Al Gore's 2000 presidential campaign and work on a number of other national and state political campaigns.
Subsequently, as a mergers and acquisitions lobbyist, he was part of a team that helped create the world's largest health insurance company. His interest in advancing his career in mergers and acquisitions ultimately led him to apply to law school. Hugh chose Vanderbilt in part because “it was the exact opposite of every negative stereotype about law school I had heard.”
“I went to law school to become a better lobbyist,” Hugh recalls. “However, those plans changed pretty quickly. During law school I wanted to be, in no particular order, a federal prosecutor, an international trade negotiator, a securities attorney, a JAG officer and a corporate attorney. I came out a financial restructuring attorney. The key part about Vanderbilt was that I was given the opportunity to gain exposure to each of these potential career paths and make a choice as to which path I would follow.”
After graduating in May 2008, Hugh moved to New York and joined Lovells, a British firm with approximately 1,800 attorneys worldwide (Lovells merged with Hogan & Hartson in May 2010 to form Hogan Lovells). “It’s been an incredibly interesting time to be doing restructuring and bankruptcy work,” he says. “Watching the global financial crises unfold in real-time, being in the court representing clients in cases like Lehman, GM and the Icelandic banking crises was certainly baptism by fire. However, the education I received at Vanderbilt gave me the starting point so that I could move from surviving to eventually thriving in the relentless and high-pressure world of New York corporate and financial law.”
Hugh graduated with the Law & Business certificate, and he touts his courses in Corporations and Mergers & Acquisitions, along with the International Practice Lab with Professor Mike Newton and his course in Federal Tax Law with Professor Herwig Schlunk, as among his best classroom experiences at Vanderbilt. “Professor Schlunk took what I thought would be a very boring statutory law class and turned it into an engaging intellectual exercise,” Hugh says.
Hugh is an avid backpacker because, he says, backpacking requires a combination of self-sufficiency, self-discipline, and social and survival skills. He chose Vanderbilt because it struck him as demanding a similarly well-rounded set of skills. “The students here are bright, collegial, cooperative and socially adept,” he says. “These are the people who will be successful in the real world of law.”
Hugh views taking advantage of opportunities outside the classroom as an essential aspect of the learning experience during law school. “As president of the American Constitution Society and secretary for the Vanderbilt Bar Association, I was able to take part in the rich network of student organizations that were a key component of the amazing community that is at Vanderbilt,” he says. He also served on the executive board of the Moot Court competition, in which he was a finalist.
“Take the time to get to know your classmates,” he advises. “They are fascinating people who, in the decades that follow law school, will be the ultimate benchmark for your time here. And overall, my time at Vanderbilt was the best three years of my life.”
