 The host across the C program. Today we're going across the C to PDX. PDX is of course the airport code for Portland, Oregon, and Portland, Oregon's international airport, by the way. PDX is also one of the many nicknames for Portland, Oregon. I discovered traveling back and forth that Portland has a bunch of nicknames, maybe so it won't be confused with another Portland. But in any event, today my guest is Chris Helman. Chris is a partner in the Portland, Oregon office of the law firm of Miller, Nash, Graham, and Dunn, LLP. Miller Nash has offices in Portland, Seattle, Vancouver, and Long Beach. Chris primarily practices international law. And I've asked her to talk about her life and the law in Portland, Oregon. It's a city that I really enjoy going to, being in for many years, gone back and forth. And I haven't heard much about it. Personally, and I'd like to learn what's what it's like. First though, Chris, welcome. It's good to see you. I'd like to know a little bit about yourself. How did you get into international law? What kind of cases do you handle? And do you enjoy it? Is it what you want to do in law? I'd like to say that I'm a little chagrin that you sent a surprise that Portland had an international airport. My goodness, we're bigger than that. I suspect a lot of people might not put that together. Yeah, and I'm glad it does because it kind of, it's a little bit, it tells you more about Portland just from that fact alone. You know, it's surprising. I deal with a lot of people all around the globe and I travel a lot in my practice and I'm always surprised at the number of people that know Portland, Oregon. So that's good. Well, to tell you a little bit about myself, I was actually born in Portland. I grew up mostly in Seattle. I went to law school here in Portland to start and then I did some additional law school in New York. International law in my practice. I love my practice. That's why I've been in practice for over 45 years and that's why I'm still here is because I really, really like it. I didn't start this kind of practice until about 25 years into my practice. I did mostly business litigation work, I guess I'd say, some kinds of business contracts and a lot of business disputes. And then I was getting a little bored and I thought, I need to do something else. And maritime law had been one of my specialties for a long time and a lot of those cases were international and I love to travel and I love to meet other people from other countries essentially. So I thought international law sounds like a good thing to do. So I went back to Columbia as I said after 25 years of practice and I got a master's in LLN and international law at Columbia and I had a lot of fun. I hadn't planned on working quite so hard on my law master's. I was also interested in the decorative arts but I didn't have much time for that. But then when I came back, the rest of my practice has been pretty much in international law and it's been a lot of fun. And you said a couple things here that raised some questions. You say a lot of people that you when you travel around the world, they know about Portland, Oregon. What do they know about it? And I mean, is Portland, Oregon a place that attracts foreign clients? Is that what they know about it? I mean, I really like Portland, Oregon just because of the atmosphere and the people. And it's just I think to me it's like a place at least in my background out of the 60s where I really enjoy what happens on the street and the people. I think that's mostly why people like it as well. We don't have as much foreign business here as we do in larger cities like San Francisco and New York or Chicago or Miami or even Seattle has more than Portland does. So people seem to kind of know it as a quirky city and for one reason or another they've heard of it. There's a lot of interesting and odd things that have happened in Portland over the years since I've been here and people seem to know those. They come here for a vacation a lot. And if somebody sees Vancouver BC or maybe goes to Seattle, they oftentimes will come to Portland as well. And it's just so odd how many people have got, oh, I know my third cousin lives in Portland or a friend of a friend lives in Portland. A lot of people seem to know about it. And it is a really interesting place to live. I haven't lived someplace else for very long, but I've always really liked living here. And if I'm a foreigner, if I'm a foreign client, is Portland receptive? Is it a place that I'd like to do business? That's a very good question. I was thinking, well, what might make Portland different than other places for doing business? And I think that a place is good for doing business for a lot of domestic or local reasons. And you just kind of add on top of that the international and the most important thing I think would be whether you do feel comfortable here as a foreigner coming to Portland. Portland's very eclectic. It has a lot of people from a lot of different countries. Somebody asked, well, what's the biggest foreign community in Portland? I'd have trouble telling you because there's somebody from everywhere here. And people think of it as a liberal or progressive city. Most of Oregon, certainly in the cities, is a Democratic in the East. It's more Republican. But I would certainly say that Portland is thought of as a very progressive city. And most of the time we think of our relationships with foreign countries as being progressive. And you said you liked traveling. What is that about? And that's what led you to the international law practice? Is that what gave you the inspiration to get into international law? Was the travel and meeting other people in different countries? What's that about? It sounds like I just like to have a lot of fun and I'm not really very serious. But that's not true. I guess I liked it for two reasons. Number one, it is really challenging to know something about the law of most every country and then to know something about how the laws of other countries interact with our own law. That's pretty complicated. And so that was really interesting to me. And then I've just always liked other cultures because people in other cultures have a different perspective on us or on most things. And I think that the better people are the ones that have broader perspectives. We're not always right. We can learn things from other countries. And that's always been interesting to me. I like that. I like that perspective. I feel the same way. I think that travel and getting out there is very helpful. And you grew up in Portland, but is there anything else that enhanced that desire to travel in your personal background? I don't really know what it was because I couldn't tell a story on my mother here. I can remember I wanted to go overseas when I was in high school and my mother said, well, I haven't been overseas. What makes you think you can go overseas? So maybe that was it. But I didn't go overseas until I was practicing law. I never went into any other countries other than, well, I guess I never went into any countries other than Canada when I was growing up or when I was in high school, undergraduate school or law school. But as soon as I did, I just really liked it. And I think it was exciting. My husband doesn't like to travel very much. And the reason he doesn't like to travel is that he says, well, I can't speak foreign languages very well. And I'm very uncomfortable not being able to speak English with people. And to me, I almost like it better because it's just always challenging. There's always a lot of stimulus because you have to figure out how to talk to people. And there's a lot of different ways to talk to people other than just speaking the language. And so I think I like that sort of personal challenge. And learning to communicate is very important with foreigners and learning to, I guess, tell them how to do business and how to practice, how to do law, legal things in the United States is being able to communicate is very important. Now, what have, you know, I've seen from your website that you've had clients in Japan, China, India, and I don't know probably other locations also, but what are they telling you about the current events? I mean, we're going through the COVID-19 pandemic here. And I'm sure Portland has been having to deal with it. What are your foreign clients telling you about dealing with it and doing business in the United States nowadays? Well, I think I know a lot of both foreign clients and a lot of foreign lawyers because a lot of the work that I'm sent is sent from foreign lawyer contacts that I know, or else I'm sending them something in their country. I do a lot of work in Europe as well, and some in South America and Latin America. I guess I would say that, well, unfortunately, I think that a lot of people in foreign countries have lost some respect for the United States. I think that we have been seen as a leader for a long time, and people are sad to see us no longer be a leader, and that's unfortunate. So that's not a good development, I don't think. I still remember many years ago meeting a German lawyer and having him say to me, thank you so much for the Marshall Plan. You rebuilt Germany after the war, and we'll always appreciate that. And I feel like we've lost a little bit of that goodwill, and I think he even told me at the time, you know, you've lost a little bit of that goodwill, and that was, say, 20 years ago. So I think that people, I haven't talked too much to people about the politics here in the last couple of weeks other than to see people just kind of shake their heads and say, what's going on? You guys all gone crazy. As far as the pandemic, one good thing is, I think that everybody cares about each other, and I know whenever I start off an email with a foreign lawyer or a foreign client, I always say, how is the pandemic affecting you and your country? I read the time, so I have some idea of what it's like in different countries, and I'll say, I hear it's like this, is that the case? And I hope you and your family are well. And people treat me the same way. So I think that they, I think most people in the world are concerned about all of the other people because they, they know how, you know, how awful it's been for people. You know, that's really interesting how the pandemic, what you're saying is that the pandemic has actually done something good in a way. I mean, it's, I got to be careful how I said that, but it actually has made you, made you and everybody else more aware of each other and more concerned, you know? Well, I think that, and this is a different sort of between the US and foreign countries, and that you'll never get an email from somebody in Europe that doesn't start out with, how are you and your family, which is not something that we do in the United States. I do it with people in foreign countries because I know they do, and I think it's, I think it's appropriate. But usually we just get right down to business. And a lot of the Asian countries are, let's just get right down to business. But I usually start out with the European way because I think it's the best. Oh, that is a benefit maybe that we could all learn from. I agree with you. Our life. I think one thing that I feel about the pandemic is that people need to learn to be kind to one another, because if you can't be kind to one another, we're all kind of in trouble. And I've seen a lot of instances where people have done that, and I think that's great. And I noticed that you were a lecturer in China at a university, or is that correct at one time? Yes, and it's funny I was thinking, now Mark, you're not asking me very many questions about the law, which is fine. What was that about? Well, I was always interested in China. And our law firm hired a young Chinese lawyer, and this was back in the early 90s. So China had essentially just, I had opened up and had was now graduating professionals from college again. And she came here and she was working for our law firm. She had gone to law school in the United States after having gone to law school in China. And we hired her. And she was a very interesting person. And she said, oh, I wish she would come to China and teach. And I said, well, I can't really get off work that long. But but I'd love to come to China. And is there any way I could teach on, you know, for like a two week or three eight basis? Oh, I can arrange anything you want. But she had a very good relationship with her university, which was Shaman University in southern China. So my husband and I both went. And we were there for I think we were two weeks in Shaman teaching. And then we did then we did a little bit of traveling in China as well. And the interesting thing that came out of that is that we met a young woman who wanted to keep in touch with us after we left. And this this is maybe a fault of mine. But I'm always wanted to see more of people. And I said, Oh, well, you should come and go to law school in the United States. We'll help you with that. I'm sure my husband was rolling his eyes at the time. But so she did. And we figured that she would, you know, I mean, here, here we are, we were in our over in our 40s at the time. And my husband thought, well, she won't stay very long, you know, she'll come here, show my friends, and then she'll be out living in an apartment or someplace else. No, she lived with us for four years. And that was not really what I had in mind when I invited her. But she was a lovely person. And she's just like, she's just like a daughter to us now. She's great. She named her son after our son. And she married, she's a lawyer practicing in China. And she married a lawyer practicing in China. And I've done a lot of work with both of them. And I just saw them. Let's see, it was in November of 2019. So I saw her just a couple of months in China, just a couple of months before the pandemic started. I'm so glad I got there. Thanks. I don't know when we'll be able to get into places like that in the future. Well, okay, let me ask you a question about law. You did a presentation on forced majeure provisions in international contracts. And I'm wondering, what was that about? And does that have to do with anything to do with the pandemic? It was all to do with the pandemic. A forced majeure clause is a clause where what in a contract, and I think every contract has one, if it didn't, it's part of the law and even without it, where it says certain kinds of events you get out of having to perform your contract. They're often called, you know, acts of God or the like. But war, insurrection, riots, there's all sorts of different things where it's thought to be beyond the control of the person that is the party to the contract. So they shouldn't be forced to be penalized for not being able to deliver goods, for example, because there was a war going on in their country. Well, pandemic is one of the things that can qualify as a forced majeure. There haven't been a lot of pandemics in our lifetimes, certainly not true pandemics that take the whole world in, but there was this time. And so there were a lot of people that were facing this legal situation where what do you do when I can't perform my contract as a result of the pandemic? So there have been a lot of forced majeure cases, which there haven't been for years. That doesn't come up very often. That was very interesting. And I've had a lot of cases that involve that. Oh, wow. So, and how do you advise your clients? I mean, going forward, I mean, I guess they have to be more aware. I mean, before the pandemic, did we ever think there was going to be a pandemic? I guess the answer to me is no. I don't think we did. Well, what I learned was that, well, I already knew that people tend to oftentimes put together form contracts themselves, businesses do. And a lot of the times, you know, it works just fine. They get them off the internet. They don't have familiarity with the provisions, but they put it together and it seems to work. When you get into a crisis like this, that's when you start to look seriously at those individual provisions. And I was really surprised to see how different they were from contract to contract. So what happens as a result of a force mature really depends a lot on the words of your contracts. And I've, I've talked to a lot of clients who have one of their contracts reviewed and their force measure provisions revised, because now they see that that's really an important provision. We just hadn't run into it before. And so what I mean, are you now doing a new clause? Is that what's coming up? Is there a new force measure clause? Are you making sure that there's one in how are you dealing with it? How are you addressing it? Almost all contracts have a force measure clause. And as I said, if they didn't have it, there's, there's law that would essentially provide you with the same benefits as a force measure clause would, but a force measure clause can be broader or it can be narrower than what the law would give you. And the law is different from country to country. Or as if you make a contract, then you know what the law is. It's right there in the contract. So I think I'd say that I, that I've had to clean up a lot of force measure provisions that weren't as good as they could have been. Maybe somebody took half of one or never really thought about how a particular clause fit with their own business. I guess that's the biggest issue is that they pick a clause that works for a different business and different kinds of situations. And they need one that actually works with their business. And, and do you now specifically refer to pandemics or is there, is that more? Yeah, I see. So that's what you, or include, and, and that's what you do for any contract, not just cross-border or international contracts, but I guess domestic contracts. That's true. And I think that most of the time people would think that a force, that a pandemic would be a force majeure, putting the word pandemic in there is helpful. But it's really a lot more than that because the force majeure clause will say what happens if there's a crisis like that that's beyond your control. Sometimes the clause will say, well, you have 90 days and if it doesn't stop within 90 days, the contract terminates. Or maybe it doesn't say that. So there's, there's sort of the consequences are the things that are different from contract to continent. I see. So get a little more specific. Let me ask you. Now, how is your law firm dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic internally? And are you, are you working from home? Is that basically what happened? You're right. You're right. Sit at home. You can probably tell by the mess on the desk behind the screen. We're all working from home and we have been since the middle of March. And I, I'm with a very large firm. So there's probably a hundred and, I don't know, 175 lawyers in all those different cities. And I can remember the day that we left the office to go work remotely. And our managing partner said, okay, we're going to do this for two weeks. And I'm very hopeful it will only be a week. And I remember thinking, well, you know, is the world going to collapse? Is our business going to collapse? What's going to happen? We've never had all these people working from home before. And I was shocked to see, and this is true with most law firms, shocked to see that everybody did work very well from home. We already had sort of home offices set up. I've got a couple of screens sitting here in front of me. And, and I frequently work from home in the sense that I would work in the evenings or because I travel, I always carry a laptop and I always work from my laptop in different countries. So I'm used to it. A lot of people aren't. I was a little concerned that it would be difficult for our assistants because they don't always have the same kind of computer technology set up in their homes as the lawyers do in theirs. But our firm made sure that everybody had very good equipment, not only just computers, but chairs, desks, you name it. And it's worked remarkably well. We've all been surprised. And none of us are going back to the office 100%. Nobody wants to go. Everybody wants to go in and see people, and we want to go in and have social functions, and we want to have meetings as a partnership, business meetings. But we want to be able to have the flexibility of working from home. And I think that I feel sorry for our landlord because I'm sure we're not going to renew our mini square feet the next time because we just are not going to need it all. And I guess you're mentioned travel, but you're not traveling, right? I haven't even been to the outskirts of Portland. And all your meetings are virtual with your clients, to your international clients? And you know, actually, we conduct trials and arbitrations virtually as well. I just did an international arbitration with a company in China and another one in India that were done virtually. What kind of topics are those arbitrations without going into anything that's confidential? But just generally, what things are being arbitrated virtually nowadays? Well, the same sort of things that would be arbitrated in person. They're all business transactions. And so far, the ones have all involved pre-pandemic situations. It's taken that long to get to arbitration or to get to trial. But at first, people were, you know, let's put this off. We want to be able to do this in person. So we'll put this off a couple of months. Well, after a few months, you realize that you don't know when you're going to be back and you can't wait to solve your business dispute that long. So you start to do it remotely. And I was also pleasantly surprised at how well that went. It went very well. Now, and let me kind of want to go back a little bit to talk about Portland. How are you, is Portland dealing with the pandemic and the state of Oregon? How are things just generally going on there? I mean, we go up and down here in Hawaii and they're not 100% sure when we'll open up again. How is this generally for Portland? You're still doing business, but it's all virtual. But when do you think things are going to open up? Well, it's changed a lot from time to time over the course of the pandemic. Things pretty much shut down very quickly in the beginning. And then they eased up over the summer. I would go into restaurants and eat inside. And now you can't eat inside in restaurants. Of course, when you could, things were all distanced and everybody took a lot of precautions, but you could literally go in and sit down and have dinner. Now you can only eat outside. And if you know Portland, you know that it rains all the time. So we all wondered, what are we going to do in the winter? How are restaurants going to survive? And how are those that want to get out of our house going to survive? Portland is a very interesting thing where we have parking on both sides of the streets now. The parking has been gotten away with in the business sections. And the restaurants have all been allowed to basically open up and open up into the street and put sort of temporary structures over that so that you get a good air flow. But you have a roof over you and you have some sides so that you don't get wet while you're sitting out there eating. But people do that a lot in Europe. People eat and drink outdoors in Europe in bad weather with an awning over them. And it's much more common. And now we've started to do it here too. And so is that, it kind of sounds like a Portland idea? I don't know whether it is or not. But it certainly works well in Portland. I'll tell you that. Okay, now I want to ask you just kind of to sum up your experience as an international lawyer doing international practice. What type of things have you learned about life and the practice of law from your international practice? Well, you know, I feel like I learned a lot about life and the practice of law from everything. My husband is currently in a facility, an assisted living facility, because he's not well. And we, there are friends that we have that live there, they became friends after he moved into the facility. And the male of that couple died this last week. And I was talking to his wife, who's almost 20 years older than I am. And I was so impressed with her strength that I thought here I am at my age, and there are still things that I can learn. And I, it's the same way with, with law. I mean, you learn things about people in every instance, if you're paying attention. Well, wow, that's more than, more than you wanted, I'm sure. It's, it's good. I really appreciate that. And I, I'm sorry for what's happened. I appreciate you telling us about it. That's very important to, to listeners to hear these type of things. What are your hopes for the future? What are, where, what are you thinking about with respect to international relations and just the world? Where, what are your hopes? We have about a minute left. I can't wait for my first trip. I'll tell you that it'll be difficult to figure out where I ought to go. I hope that people will be more tolerant of each other if you want to know what I think generally. And I'm really eager to get out and talk in person to people because even though remote is works, you get a lot more out of things when you can do it in person. So I, I miss that. And I'm looking forward to being able to go to foreign countries and actually see people. Well, Chris, Chris Helmer, I appreciate your knowledge and your advice and your thoughts about your personal life and your professional life altogether. So I thank you very much for being my guest today and not a guest from PDX. Well, I'm delighted, Mark. Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity. All right. As we say here in Hawaii.