Growing up, Carolyn Lam had no interest in being a lawyer. Her parents, who immigrated from Vietnam the year before she was born, were against her becoming an attorney, too.
“They were extremely concerned about my decision to become a lawyer, and what they saw on TV wasn’t promising,” Lam said. “Who wants your kid to learn how to weasel their way out of the truth and subvert the law?”
“I went to college fully expecting to fulfill the Asian American dream of becoming a doctor,” Lam said. “When I flunked precal, for the third time, I finally accepted that math and science weren’t my wheelhouse. I threw myself into philosophy and literature and dreamt of becoming a professor.”
During college at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, she took an elective course on constitutional law.
“Given my other classes, dissecting judicial opinions came naturally to me,” she said. “My professor, a local labor and employment attorney with a strong capital crimes pro bono practice, swore I was a legal genius. Of course, on the first day of law school, I found out she lied.”
Lam did fine. Better than fine, actually. She aced law school, practiced for five years at labor and employment litigation boutiques and then went in-house a dozen years ago.
For the past three years, Lam has served as the deputy general counsel and chief compliance officer at Dallas-based Ecobat, the world’s largest battery recycler. And her successes, especially during the past year and a half, have really stacked up.
Lam settled a major class action lawsuit against Ecobat for pennies on the dollar. She played a critical role in the company’s divestiture of seven different business operations across three countries in southern Africa. She managed the suspension of Ecobat’s Italian operations, as well as subsequent restart. She implemented the company’s first global anticompetition training program and global code of conduct. And she managed an investigation of and the legal response to a fatality in South Africa, a compensation dispute in Germany and litigation brought by a former managing director.
Ecobat, under the guidance of Lam and her team, launched four groundbreaking software platforms that replaced a patchwork of disjointed systems that provide Ecobat leaders with transparency and access to real-time data and reporting that helps the company meet its ESG goals, implement global compliance training and ensure that each division complies with applicable government contractor obligations.
“At risk of sounding like a late-night infomercial, that’s not all Carolyn has done in her three years at Ecobat,” said Meyling Ly Ortiz, managing counsel of employment at Toyota. “Until Ecobat hired their new chief sustainability officer, Carolyn managed their conflict minerals response — no small feat for a battery recycler. Speaking of which, because Ecobat is the world’s largest lead battery recycler, Carolyn necessarily has to address antitrust concerns, including developing a response plan in case of the need to navigate dawn raids for allegations overseas.”
“She is also a founding member of Ecobat’s data privacy committee and works closely with Ecobat’s global data privacy firm,” said Ortiz, who nominated Lam for the 2023 DFW Corporate Counsel Award for Senior Counsel of the Year for a Small Legal Department, which is five lawyers or less. “As a fan of Shonda Rhimes’ work, I dare to compare Carolyn Lam to Olivia Pope of Scandal with the range that she has to manage and oversee. I use the word ‘manage’ loosely, because Carolyn is in a legal department of three, including her.”
“The truth of the matter is that there is little that she does not touch,” said Ortiz, who was the recipient of the 2020 DFW Corporate Counsel Award for Pro Bono and Public Service.
The Association of Corporate Counsel’s DFW Chapter and The Texas Lawbook received more than a half-dozen nominations for the award for Senior Counsel of the Year for a Small Legal Department. A panel of independent judges reviewed the nominations and voted to name Lam as one of the two finalists.
ACC-DFW and The Lawbook will honor the finalists and announce the winners of the 2023 DFW Corporate Counsel Awards on Jan. 25 at a ceremony at the George W. Bush Institute.
Premium Subscriber Q&A: The Lawbook visited with the 2023 DFW Corporate Counsel Award finalist about her best day at Ecobat, the biggest challenges facing legal departments for accomplishing DEI objectives and what outside counsel needs to know about her.
“Carolyn’s excellence as both a lawyer and a leader stem from her unwavering commitment to the legal profession, her ability to inspire others around her and her wide range of experience and knowledge,” said Ecobat Chief Legal Officer Daniel Terrell. “From a legal perspective, she possesses a profound understanding of the legal landscape, combining sharp analytical skills with a comprehensive knowledge of a wide range of legal matters, including compliance, labor and employment, litigation. Her leadership style is characterized by a balance of decisiveness and inclusivity, fostering a collaborative environment where diverse perspectives are valued.”
“Carolyn’s ability to navigate complex legal challenges while motivating those around her to excel sets her apart as an exceptional lawyer and leader,” Terrell said. “She has spent much of her personal time mentoring young lawyers and peers, which is inspirational.”
Jarlath McGurran, a partner at White & Case, said Lam focuses on the critical issues in a transaction and “exercises great judgment.”
“She is very good at quickly building relationships both internally and externally,” McGurran said. “Carolyn had done a great job at building out the compliance function at Ecobat.”
Lam, who joined Ecobat in March 2021, said working at the company alongside Terrell is “a privilege.”
“I learn so much every day, that sometimes it’s hard to keep track of the milestones while I race to the next mile marker,” she said. “These are a few successes, however, that have made work so much simpler and more fulfilling, that we still marvel over them on a regular basis.”
Lam was born in Florissant, Missouri, about a year after her parents moved to the U.S. from Vietnam. Her mom and dad lived in a relative’s unheated garage with her mother’s two younger brothers. When her parents first arrived in Missouri, they had jobs making tofu and serving fast food. When Lam was two months old, her parents moved to Dallas/Fort Worth because it had a stronger Vietnamese population due to the federal refugee resettlement program.
After moving to North Texas, Lam’s parents worked in factories at companies such as NEC and Bell Helicopters.
“Eventually, my father’s obsession with self-improvement led both of my parents to college — they worked full time and went to school part time for years,” she said. “My father graduated with his engineering degree when I was 9, and my mom became a nurse when I was 14.”
After graduating college in three years, Lam went to law school as a “fallback plan.”
“I truly wanted to spend the next decade reading and writing about the difference between right and wrong, whether actions should be dictated by reason or innate morality and whether those actions or ideals lent meaning to life,” she said. “But when I looked past the PhD, my inner refugee couldn’t see anything past a job flipping hamburgers. Terrified, I applied to a few law schools ‘just in case.’ And when push came to shove, I chose the full scholarship for law school.”
Lam graduated from law school in 2006 and became an associate in a Birmingham plaintiffs law firm called John D. Saxon, where she practiced for three years and managed more than 60 active cases.
“Once I started practicing law and got my feet wet in the real world, I quickly realized I’d made the right decision,” she said. “While it wasn’t the place to learn how to do my best legal work, it was literally trial by fire — my first year, I tried three cases, handled countless oral arguments and wrote reams of briefs. With so many opportunities to grow, I flourished and learned how to apply my esoteric classes on ethics in the real world.”
In November 2009, Lam joined Ford & Harrison, a national labor and employment law firm that represents defendants and has an office in Dallas.
By the end of 2011, Lam found “the endless cycle of litigation” to be boring.
“Life seemed to become an endless cycle meeting and conferring, briefing and, worst of all, billing,” she said. “The part that I still loved was talking to clients to learn about their companies’ goals, pain points and tipping points. On a professional level, these conversations led me to give the best and most nuanced advice possible but, on a personal level, taught me about the kind of servant and leader I wanted to be.”
In 2012, Terrell hired Lam for her first in-house job when he was the general counsel at Las Colinas-headquartered PLH Group, an energy-infrastructure firm. Lam was senior counsel handling labor and employment disputes and conducted internal investigations.
Terrell moved to energy retailer Stream Gas and Electric in May 2016 as its chief legal officer, and Lam joined him six months later as associate general counsel.
“I was ready to accept a position at Tesla, but then Daniel made me an offer I couldn’t refuse,” she said.
At Stream Lam managed labor and employment matters, complex commercial litigation, cybersecurity and compliance matters.
In August 2019, Terrell and Lam led Stream’s $330 million sale to Houston-based NRG Energy. While Terrell joined Baker Botts, Lam became the general counsel at Kynect, an energy marketing business that was previously part of Stream.
Lam was Kynect’s GC and head of human resources and risk management.
“At Kynect, while the company was small, the problems were not,” she said. “We were in business with global companies, starting new national business lines and, of course, a global pandemic. With these challenges, I faced the same problem I did at my first firm job — wearing so many hats, solving so many different types of problems on a daily basis, I excelled as a problem-solving counselor, but I was not doing my best legal work. I was spending more time chasing cows than building fences.”
In June 2020, Ecobat, a battery recycling company with roots dating back to the 17th Century in Germany, hired Terrell as its chief legal officer. The company, which was then based in the U.K., went through bankruptcy and restructuring in 2019 and exited with new owners.
Carolyn Lam and Daniel Terrell
Terrell called Lam in 2021 to help with the corporate restructuring, which included bringing Ecobat’s four operating divisions spread out over 26 countries under one umbrella company to be headquartered in Dallas.
“When Daniel called me about the position at Ecobat, I saw an opportunity to grow as an attorney, and that’s exactly what I wanted,” she said. “A way to become a better lawyer and counselor.”
Terrell said that Lam’s “track record” at Ecobat is marked by a series of major successes for the business.
“Carolyn’s leadership in closing a major international divestiture this year was a significant initiative for our company,” Terrell said. “She also rolled out an enterprise-wide compliance program for all employees across the globe, developed a third-party compliance program and implemented a global sanctions monitoring program. In addition, her adept handling of high-stakes negotiations and her successful resolution of complex legal disputes have not only safeguarded the company but also positioned it for sustainable growth.”
“Carolyn’s successes extend beyond legal matters,” he said. “Her leadership has contributed to a positive and inclusive workplace culture, fostering innovation and collaboration among all members of the Ecobat team.”
Lam said there was a lot of learning in the early days.
“When I joined the company three years ago, the company’s C-suite had been in place for less than a year,” she said. “Only finance employees had been in place for longer than that — the global legal, commercial, HR, HSE, IT and operations teams were all new to the company. The new global functional model was still in its infancy.”
“With dozens upon dozens of entities, we didn’t know what we didn’t know,” she said. “We knew we had no idea what the legal spend was. We didn’t know what the company’s contracts were. We knew we had employment class actions. We didn’t know what our employee headcount was. We knew that some of our entities were government contractors. We didn’t know which governments and which entities. So this was a different kind of education.”
“Three years at Ecobat have taught me how to extract what I need while also accommodating other communication styles so that our international team feels valued and safe to contribute,” she said.
Jonathan Rector, a shareholder at Littler in Dallas, said Lam understands the practical implications of litigation.
“Carolyn has an amazing ability to move at lighting speed, jumping from one matter to the next, many times within different areas of the law, without missing a beat,” Rector said.
“Personally, Carolyn is one of the kindest people I know. She’s empathetic and whip-smart. And you may not know this, but even in the heart of Dallas she’s found a way to raise and keep chickens. Professionally, Carolyn is just as tough as she is smart. She’s not afraid to make the right call.”
Scott Fulford, a former lawyer at Susman Godfrey and now Ecobat’s associate general counsel, said Lam is a good leader “because she is personable, humble and genuine.”
“Carolyn is tenacious,” Fulford said. “She’ll dig into an issue until she has found answers to every question and thoroughly understands every detail. Carolyn has built Ecobat’s compliance program from scratch, which is a remarkable accomplishment. Given Ecobat’s global reach and multiple lines of business, she had to coordinate among — and secure buy-in from — a multitude of stakeholders across the company.”
Ortiz of Toyota said that some of Lam’s “magic comes from her soft skills and personality.”
“[Carolyn] is also intellectually curious, seeming to know a little about everything — or knows someone who knows or can find out,” Ortiz said. “Some of her magic is simply her worldview. She has never been the stereotypical unhappy lawyer. Carolyn takes so much joy in our profession. Though an introvert, she can’t imagine anything better than learning a new business through building relationships with new internal clients.”
“From energy infrastructure construction to retail services to her current company’s position as the world’s largest lead battery recycler, she loves every minute of absorbing details about what makes her companies work through her colleagues,” Ortiz said. “To her, the joy from those relationships is what make the hard days worth it.”
