Meet Lennart Garritsen, who pursued a Liberal Arts & Sciences degree at University College Utrecht before heading off to Oxford for a BA in Jurisprudence and joining Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP in 2016. He spent the first two years doing rotations in Dispute Resolution, International Trade and Competition, Financial Regulatory and Cross-Border Transactions before returning to the EU & UK Competition law practice as an associate. After 4 years in private practice, he made a major career switch and joined the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs as policy officer in April 2021. Exciting!
1. If you had to pick one book for everyone in the world to read, which book would you recommend?
Difficult question. The last book I read was called “The Constant Gardener” by John le Carré. It’s a novel about a diplomat who goes to work in Kenya with a very activist wife. Without giving away too much, she uncovers how large pharmaceutical companies are testing medicine on the local population by providing the medication for free. I won’t give away too much, but I recommend reading it!
2. In a nutshell, who is Lennart Garritsen?
I’d say that as to my personality, I’m curious and adventurous. I’m someone who likes to discover new worlds and likes to be involved in many different topics. That’s also one of the reasons I made the career switch from law to diplomacy. I love to travel, meet new people & learn new things. I also believe that kindness and a smile can get you far in the world. Wouldn’t call it my life motto per se, but it’s something I try to do - that I try to follow myself.
3. People want a solid understanding of what your work and day-to-day looks like. What are you going to tell them?
I work as a country officer (policy officer) for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the Andes countries (Chile, Peru, Bolivia & Ecuador) and Panama. The work I do is very diverse and we cover many different themes.
First of all, I’m the first point of contact for all matters that are covered by the Ministry for those countries and cover lots of different themes. I liaise with the Dutch embassies in those countries & the embassies of those countries in the Netherlands also liaise with me. Questions come up on whether I can connect and introduce public or private parties to each other and we often also get questions on what the stance is or views of the Netherlands are on specific topics (e.g. the war in the Ukraine). On a ministerial level, there’s usually set “lines to take” on topics, which we then share with our embassies so they can share.
In addition, I prepare visits and meetings for the Minister of Foreign Affairs with the ministers of other countries. Basically, ahead of such a meeting, I prepare a country file, speaking points and further background. I do this for the Andes countries & Panama. Some groups of countries have 1 dedicated policy officer, other policy officers are dedicated to a specific country. This happens when there’s a lot going on or we have many (development) programmes or projects running in a country, which is the case for Colombia for example. When a country is highly developed, we don’t have such development cooperation projects.
In the work I do, we focus mainly on political cooperation and on 3 main themes. These themes are cross-border crime where we facilitate cooperation at customs, ports, etc. Then there’s climate change, which is addressed in the multilateral field at COPS and the UN. And then there’s multilateralism, which is currently being dominated by the war between Russia & the Ukraine, where there’s lots of resolutions being passed at the UN and my goal is to do outreach to countries in the Andes and get them on board with certain resolutions.
You travel quite a bit as well, right?
Recently I did my two weeks consular internship in Suriname. Basically you learn everything about visa requests and passport related matters. Not too long ago I was also in Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia for bilateral political consultations. You speak to ministers of Foreign Affairs, deputy ministers and policy officers and together we set the agenda for our bilateral cooperation for the next 1 - 2 years. You talk about topics of mutual interest and create a roadmap for your collaboration.
Next year, I’ll be off to Budapest to work at the embassy there for 2 years. I wanted to stay in Europe and I think it’s a very interesting country from a political climate point of view. In addition, as of the second half of 2024, they’ll also be chairing the presidency of the European Union.
4. What makes your job great and what makes it a little less great?
What makes my job great is definitely that I see a lot of the world. You meet a lot of people, not just when travelling but also in The Hague at the embassies. Embassies organise a lot of events on specific themes, such as Ecuador doing an event on the Galapagos islands and Chile hosting a cultural wine tasting event. Moreover, what I love is that my work is basically all about current affairs. Things like the war in Russia and the Ukraine, or the evacuation in Afghanistan where a lot of people were taken off their regular work to assist with the evacuation and compiling passenger lists.
Less great is the paperwork. Often, work we do has to pass through a number of different layers in the organisation before it’s finally approved. When you work in a law firm for a few years, you get a lot of responsibility and you know you can send documents out to the client without having to have it reviewed by a number of different people.
5. At what point and how did you realise you wanted to take on a new challenge? / What motivated you to make your career change?
It was COVID at the time and I was at home with some more time on my hands. I always knew I wouldn’t stay in the legal profession forever. Initially my idea was to go into private practice, make some money and then open up a B&B! But then I also figured I can always open a B&B, so I wanted to try something else first. That was diplomacy.
Before I moved to London. I’d lived in Rome, London and Beijing. I’d spent quite some time in the UK and after the Brexit my work was becoming more and more English (from a legal perspective) and I realised the longer I stayed, the more difficult it would become for me to return to the Netherlands. Also, in the legal profession, the further along you get, the more you specialise and I thought it would be a shame to only focus on one thing.
I was looking to do something which would allow me to go in different directions. As a diplomat, you relocate every 4 years and you get to experience a new kind of environment & discover the world. You also get to work on a broad range of topics and work with many different countries, people and cultures. It provides an extra layer of depth to the things I do. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs provides many different opportunities!
6. How did you make the move to your current job? For others looking to make a similar change, what would be the #1 advice you would give them?
A very long time ago, in 2011 I think it was, I looked into going into applying for the international traineeship of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (“Diplomatenklasje”) but at the time there was still a hard French language requirement so I did not pursue it (nowadays also German or Spanish language capabilities are accepted). By 2018, I thought I had definitively missed my opportunity to apply, as one could only apply within two years after finishing your masters degree. In 2020, however, I discovered that the rules had been changed and they accepted professionals with up to 5 years of work experience. This coincided with the pandemic, during which I reflected on life and my career aspirations. I applied to the programme in October 2020 and heard in February 2021 that I’d been accepted.
As to my advice for people looking to make a similar transition: it’s a bit of a cliché, but don’t get too worked up about the competition. Focus on your own strengths and qualities. And my #1 advice is to make sure it’s not the only thing on your radar. Some people may consider becoming a diplomat as their #1 mission, but if you see it that way it adds so much more pressure. For me, diplomacy was one of a few different options I was seriously considering so it wouldn’t have been a disaster if I didn’t end up getting accepted to the programme.
7. What do you consider the most valuable transferable skills that you developed as a corporate lawyer?
Three skills come to mind:
Communication. It’s super important in diplomacy. We’re not talking punctuation marks, but language. Choosing the right language to make sure a message gets across on an intercultural level. You need to avoid miscommunication because it can have serious impact on international relations.
Attention to detail. It’s a bit less directly applicable to diplomacy - unless you’re tasked with negotiating treaties or other legal documents. But it remains an important skill in general.
Project management. I worked in competition law and you have to coordinate major projects, get input from and align with local law firms. You need similar skills at the ministry.
8. What were you trained to do as a corporate lawyer working at a law firm, that would not serve you well in your current job? What did you have to “unlearn”? And what skills did you have to pick up on quickly?
In private practice, I had a lot of responsibility, prepared documents myself and sent them out. What I had to get used to is that when you work for the Ministry, almost everything you do needs alignment and coordination with either your director and often also other directorates for example for specific specialised knowledge. You need to learn how to find the right people to coordinate things with. More people takes more time, so it’s a whole different way of working. The pace is different.
Something that I also had to learn more about quickly was political sensitivities. At a law firm, the work you do is on a confidential basis. You don’t talk about client matters in the train either. But in my job now, you need to be aware of the risk of eavesdropping and we also put our phones in a jar sometimes.
9. What - if anything- do you miss from your time working as a corporate lawyer in private practice, and what are you most happy about to have left behind?
What I miss the most is the intellectual challenge (not talking about preparing closing binders here). As a legal specialist, you do legal research and go deep. You think about all the arguments you could raise, all the possible interpretations of rules and so forth. As a policy officer, you’re a generalist. It’s more about process than content. I do miss the deep level of thinking I used to do as a lawyer.
What I don't miss are Wednesday evening time entry deadlines. In addition, even though we are accountable to and do our very best for our stakeholders, the taxpayers, they are further removed from your day to day responsibilities than your client in the private sector in the legal profession. The client in private practice adds a certain type of pressure which I don’t miss. And I don’t miss the billable hour and turnover targets.
10. If you were prohibited from doing what you currently do, what would you be doing for a living instead?
Easy. Pilot! I wanted to become a pilot after secondary school but then decided to try University College first. Then, you go from one thing to another and before you know it you’re 31 years old and too old.
11. What do you consider some of the best pieces of advice you’ve ever been given? Can be life or work related.
Don’t let statistics or thinking you can’t do something scare you. I applied to Oxford and I applied to the international traineeship. The acceptance rates are low, but there’s no point fussing over them. One thing is for sure: if you don’t even try or apply, you’ll never get there.
And: kindness and a smile will get you far.
*Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the interviewee alone and not their employer.
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