Lillian Hardy ’06

Berkeley Law is three time zones and nearly 3,000 miles away from Lillian Hardy, but that’s no match for her attachment to the school. A new member of the Berkeley Law Alumni Association Board of Directors, Hardy says, “There is no distance that could keep me from my law school community. If anything, distance has made my heart grow fonder.”

A partner at Hogan Lovells in Washington, D.C., she derives great satisfaction from meeting — and bringing together — fellow alumni with similar sentiments.

“Many others on the East Coast feel the same way, but just need additional opportunities and points of connection to stay engaged,” she says. “I want to use my board role to help reclaim disconnected alums and increase Berkeley’s profile in the D.C. metropolitan region in particular.”

It’s not the only new position Hardy accepted in July. She also became her firm’s partner in charge of Collaboration & Client Engagement for the Americas (U.S. and Latin America), and she steers the delivery of legal services and external programs with clients through strategic partnerships and initiatives. Named a National Law Journal D.C. Rising Star last year and included on the Global Investigation Review 40 under 40 list this year, Hardy is no stranger to demanding leadership roles. She heads Hogan Lovells’ multidisciplinary global crisis management practice, and she has overseen incidents and investigations for clients on five continents.

Even before 2020 brought a pandemic and a renewed focus on race and equity issues, “companies and organizations were facing more crisis-level legal risk year after year, and I knew there was a greater need for specialized lawyering as a result,” Hardy says. “So as any Berkeley alum might do, I innovated and created a practice group aimed at answering that call.”

Her team responds to crises involving high levels of legal and reputational risks. This year, it has assisted a company that hit a snag trying to get ventilators to market, and it is currently making a pro bono push to get dozens of medically vulnerable inmates out of coronavirus-ravaged prisons.

Hardy, who focuses her practice on Foreign Corrupt Practices Act investigations, cybersecurity and data privacy-related investigations, and consumer financial enforcement actions, joined Hogan Lovells and moved to Washington in 2008. While she figured she would “stay three years max” before returning to her Oakland roots, that plan changed with the exhilaration of practicing law in Washington and meeting her husband.

Even so, feeling close to her faraway law school has never been a problem.

“Berkeley Law grads care about things that matter, including the school and one another,” Hardy says. “Connectedness across the community will keep our law school relevant and attractive.”

—Andrew Cohen