Win Quayle, Esq.

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When Win Quayle retired after a successful career as a corporate partner and general counsel at Ropes & Gray LLP, he turned his time to volunteering --including as a Senior Fellow at CLF. Over the past five years, Win has not only helped CLF with a wide variety of projects, but also embraced a role as mentor to early-career attorneys at the organization.

What drew you to the law?

A few things: A kindly lawyer helped our family when my father passed away suddenly when I was in college. The lawyer went beyond the call of duty, advising my mother on business and financial matters and taking a personal interest in my two sisters and me.

That was also the Watergate era, and legal issues were in the news all the time as they are now. There was the so-called Saturday Night Massacre, when President Nixon ordered Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire the special prosecutor, Archibald Cox. Richardson refused and resigned. Both Cox and Richardson were models of principled lawyers. (I ended up working at Ropes & Gray, the firm where they both had practiced.)

After college, I spent time in divinity school. There, I took a law school course and had a field placement with a public interest law firm. I enjoyed helping parents and children exercise their rights under the Massachusetts special education law.

These experiences helped me see some of the ways lawyers help people in need and adhere to high ethical standards.

How did you first learn about Conservation Law Foundation?

When my family lived in Lincoln, Massachusetts, my neighbor was John Pike, a retired Ropes & Gray partner volunteering with CLF. I had worked with John when I was a new associate at Ropes. He told me about his CLF work and often asked me to bring his CLF dictation tapes (yes, there was such a technology) to his former secretary for transcription. And Toni Hicks and Wendy Sheu, the former and current directors of CLF's Senior Fellows program, are both former Ropes lawyers. Before I retired, Toni told me about the program.

What interests you most about serving as a Senior Fellow?

Having the chance to learn about CLF's work and its inspiring staff from the inside, and especially working with some younger staff...