Attorney Spotlight – Get to Know Tara J. Plochocki

1. What inspired you to pursue a law career? I had been leaning towards being a lawyer since I was young, probably because of subtle brainwashing by my parents.  In my early 20s, however, I wasn’t sure that I wanted to be based in the United States, so getting a U.S. law degree was not necessarily right for me. I had some incredible job opportunities after university—serving in the Peace Corps in Jordan after 9/11, teaching in the foothills of the Himalayas in a Tibetan refugee community and working and living with ex-political prisoners, and then helping Reed Brody at Human Rights Watch put together the case for genocide against Hissène Habre—that made fieldwork and advocacy seem really appealing. But one day, I was covering the lunch shift at a restaurant near the United Nations headquarters in New York—this is where my roommates and I worked to make ends meet—and I was serving a couple of gentlemen with U.N. credentials. I overheard them talking about an armed conflict that was going on at the time, in which one country was absolutely crushing the civilians of the other. To put it mildly, I did not agree with them, and I came away from my shift that day 100% certain that I did not ever want to be in a position where, in advocating for a cause, I had to rely solely on the good will of politicians. Solving a problem by getting an enforceable court order from a judge held much more appeal (Pun intended).  I went to the University of Michigan Law School the next year.

2. Why did you choose the areas of law that you practice, especially within the vibrant legal landscape of Washington, D.C.? My practice involves cross-border commercial litigation and fraud disputes, judgment and arbitral award enforcement and asset recovery, and litigation on behalf of and against foreign sovereigns. The best thing about this practice is that we get to take money from people who should not have it and give it to the people who should: our clients. This practice also relates to my original passion for enforcing the rule of law globally. Our cases push U.S. courts to open their doors to non-U.S. litigants and give them access to justice; judgments and awards are only useful if you can manage to enforce them somewhere in the world. And when governments or officials abuse their privileges and then try to hide behind sovereign immunity, it is satisfying to hold them to account just like any other litigant. Our cases are also intellectually challenging—I’m never bored. Our typical client is a person or entity with significant financial losses arising out of a fraud or breach of fiduciary duty. The case might have connections to potential defendants and assets in a dozen jurisdictions, and the client may not have particularly great evidence to prove the wrong committed.  Marshaling evidence and figuring out where to bring a case and against whom is incredibly fun, especially since I get to do it with my foreign lawyer counterparts globally.  It is such a privilege to work with brilliant and delightful people from every time zone and hemisphere. As for why Washington, D.C.: it is a city for idealistic and tenacious nerds, and I am one of them.

3. What skills do you draw upon when it comes to your specific practice areas? Listening and having curiosity are important to my practice. Our clients and our foreign lawyer counterparts are very smart people with insights and expertise that are useful not only to the merits of the case, but the broader strategy against the defendants. I also tend to strongly identify with our clients, and one of the very best parts of my job is writing my client’s story in a comprehensive, compelling way, regardless of whether we are bringing a plenary action on the merits or doing a simple petition for evidence. An added benefit, of course, is that the side that tells the best story tends to win the case.

4. What is the most rewarding part about your job as the first attorney representing Sequor Law in Washington, D.C.? I am grateful daily that my Sequor colleagues had enough faith in me to let me be the first person to open an office outside of Miami. It took a lot of trust and courage—on their part and mine—to leave our comfort zones and take on this new challenge. We are all thrilled that it has worked out so well in our first year! Also, while I have been fortunate to practice with and learn from superlative lawyers my entire legal career, Ed Davis is a pioneer in the field of asset recovery law and it has been a privilege to absorb some of his expertise. 

5. Tell us about a mentor who made an impact on your career. Mark Rosenbaum was the Legal Director of the ACLU of Southern California and a professor at my law school.  I had a chance to intern for him and then to take his 14th Amendment class. For anyone who is not a U.S. Constitution aficionado, the 14th Amendment is the one that guarantees equal protection under the law (among other things). Mark taught us to “think about how the doctrine moves” and marched us through the lawyering decisions on which cases were brought when, with each new case building on the case before, inching closer and closer to real equality under the law. I think about “how the doctrine moves” every time I have a case with the potential to move the needle on an issue of importance to my practice. And lucky for me, Mark has reached out over the years for help with his own efforts to move constitutional law doctrines.

6. If you weren’t practicing law, what would you be doing? If I had to choose something unrelated to the law, then it would be a tie between writing fiction and rescuing stray dogs. Perhaps I could read my original works to rescue dogs? They generally don’t have discerning literary palates, so that could work well for me.

7. What might people be surprised to learn about you? I grew up in sunny Southern California. I seem way too serious to have come from there.

8. What is a good book or article you read recently? Jay Newman and Thomas Eymond-Laritaz published an article a few months ago in the Financial Times titled “Sovereign investment dispute resolution is broken.”  They rightly observe that enforcing judgments or arbitral awards against foreign sovereigns is astronomically expensive, and that lawyers must use both the law and creative diplomatic and economic solutions to best serve their creditor clients.