October, 2002

In October, Deborah Enix-Ross returns to the United States after a nearly five-year sojourn in Geneva, Switzerland. Deborah has accepted a management position with Debevoise & Plimpton, a large, international firm in New York. Since 1998, Deborah has been on the forefront of international alternative dispute resolution (ADR) and intellectual property law, practicing at the Arbitration and Mediation Center of the World Intellectual Property Organization.

Deborah did not take the traditional career path of an intellectual property attorney. She earned her BA in broadcast journalism. Coming into law school, her area of interest, albeit in the abstract, was international law. "International law is a very broad area. These days any area of the law (business, family, environmental, criminal, et cetera) has an international dimension. I think it is better for students to focus on a practice area first and then look for its international component." Deborah never took an intellectual property or arbitration class and in her first two jobs out of law school she was involved mostly in labor and business law. "Students need to understand that their careers will extend over a long period. Achieving their goals may take time and involve nontraditional routes, but as long as they remain steadfast and concentrate on being good lawyers, sooner or later they will receive the recognition they deserve."

Deborah got her big break seven years out of law school when she went to work for the United States Council for International Business (USCIB) where she served as a representative for U.S. business interests abroad at the International Chamber of Commerce based in Paris. At one stage of her tenure at the USCIB, Deborah was assigned the intellectual property portfolio.

After seven years with the USCIB and a Diploma in Comparative Law from The Parker School at Columbia University, Deborah became the Director of International Litigation at Price Waterhouse, coordinating the firm's IP and Dispute Resolution groups. When IP exploded as an international, political and legal issue in the mid 1990s, Deborah was well-positioned.

Deborah now has fifteen years experience focusing on international law. Over the past five years, her sought-after expertise has taken her to nine countries on five continents as a guest lecturer at conferences. She was appointed by the Department of Commerce and the Department of State to NAFTA's Advisory Committee on Private Commercial Disputes. She's a member of the Advisory Board of the Institute for Transnational Arbitration and she is a former member of the Board of Directors for the American Arbitration Association. She is also a Divisional Chair for the ABA's Section of International Law and Practice.

"After law school, I returned home to New York and started studying for the New York Bar. I remember people warned me that because I did not attend a New York law school I would not pass the New York Bar. However, the University of Miami is a national law school. Whenever we studied a topic, we would also discuss how other states, for example New York and California, handled similar cases. It was not just Florida law. The University of Miami is an excellent law school and I am proud to be an alumna. I felt well-equipped when I left UM and I think my career is proof positive!"