Professor of the Practice of Law
Retired Partner/Consulting Attorney, Milbank Tweed Hadley & McCloy
Robert S. “Bob” Reder ’78 always wanted to be a lawyer. Growing up in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, in the Berkshires, Reder has fond memories of doing his homework in his father’s law office.
His experience as an undergraduate at Williams College, where the blunt-spoken Reder majored in political science, confirmed his interest and his aptitude for law. “Professors at Williams criticized my writing style because it was ‘too structured,’ but that turned out to be a plus in law school and law practice,” he said.
Reder might have ended up studying law in the Northeast had a friend not recommended Vanderbilt. During the summer between college and law school, Reder was just beginning to wonder where he was going to live when he received a call out of the blue from a future classmate, Chet Gerdts ’78. A Manhattan native, Gerdts had rented an apartment in Nashville and then scanned the class roster hoping to find a roommate from the Northeast. “It was a good match—he had an apartment, and I had a car,” Reder said.
Gerdts and Reder roomed together throughout law school, and both served on the Law Review staff. “Chet is the reason I ended up in New York,” Reder said. “At the end of our first year, he said, ‘You did really well—you have to go to New York.’ ” In the summer of 1977, the pair shared an apartment on Park Avenue, where they experienced the famous New York blackout, while Reder worked as a summer associate at Milbank and Gerdts at Donovan Leisure Newton & Irvine.
When Reder joined Milbank as an associate in 1978, his initial plan was to spend a couple of years in New York and then join his father’s hometown practice. But his father died unexpectedly, and Reder also found that he had a genuine interest in the firm’s corporate practice. He also met his future wife, Terri, at Milbank. He flourished at the firm, becoming a partner in 1987. “I liked the people in the corporate group and the work, and the head of the group became my second father—he was a real mentor to me,” Reder said. Soon after he was named a partner, highly regarded mergers and acquisitions lawyer Lawrence Lederman moved to Milbank from Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz, and Reder joined his team. “Working with Larry, I focused on M&A and discovered that I had an aptitude for and great interest in high-stakes transactions,” Reder said.
His early deals were primarily domestic, but as Milbank’s work and clientele expanded globally, Reder’s work included more cross-border M&A transactions. “An M&A lawyer is really the quarterback of the deal,” he said. “It’s your responsibility to make sure everything is done right, but it’s also a collaborative effort. I was successful in part because I always knew what I didn’t know, and never tried to do things I couldn’t do.” Reder retired in 2011 at a youthful 58, after 33 years with Milbank. “I loved my work, my practice and my clients, but it was time to see what else I could do and catch up with the rest of my life after being a partner in a big law firm,” he said.
Reder had always enjoyed teaching and mentoring, and he often delivered internal seminars to Milbank attorneys. But he hadn’t considered teaching law until corporate law professor Bob Thompson, who now teaches at Georgetown, invited him to lunch. Reder’s busy practice meant he typically ate at his desk; he considers it a stroke of luck that he accepted. By the end of lunch, Reder had agreed to make a presentation to Thompson’s M&A class. In the years following, Reder made frequent presentations to Professor Randall Thomas’ M&A and Corporation classes and began co-teaching short courses in M&A with Thomas. Since retiring, he has taught courses in M&A and corporate governance as an adjunct at Fordham Law School and co-taught an M&A course at Columbia. Last spring, he taught a seven-week course on private M&A transactions as a member of Vanderbilt’s adjunct faculty before joining the permanent Law and Business faculty as a professor of the practice of law this fall. During fall 2013, he taught Negotiated Public M&A, a transactional practice seminar, and Advising Corporate Directors. He is living in Nashville but makes frequent visits to his permanent home in Long Beach, New York.
Reder is enjoying his new role as a law professor enormously. “One lesson I take from this experience is that you shouldn’t become so immersed in your work that you lose sight of other opportunities and experiences,” he said. “Things have turned out well, and I consider myself very fortunate. But who knows what else I missed out on during all those years at Milbank by telling people I was too busy?”