Ty’Meka Reeves-Sobers ’15 is a rock star in the environmental law field. Named a “Rising Star” by Law360 for her work on multiple multibillion-dollar deals, and with a résumé studded with transactional highlights from nearly 10 years of practice, Reeves-Sobers has gone from strength to strength since graduating from Texas Law and launching her practice.
Now, the Cleveland, Ohio, native is taking on her biggest challenge yet, having joined global law firm Clifford Chance LLP last February with a career-defining mandate to create, from the ground up, the firm’s first-ever U.S. environmental practice.
Reeves-Sobers is off to a flying start. In addition to her leadership responsibilities, she counsels clients on environmental issues across a broad spectrum of complex corporate transactions, including mergers and acquisitions, capital markets, real estate, and finance matters.
Clifford Chance is the third stop on Reeves-Sobers’s rapid ascent. She began her career in the Austin office of Baker Botts LLP, as an environmental regulatory attorney and where she ultimately transitioned into representing public and private companies in mergers and acquisitions, securities offerings, Securities and Exchange Commission compliance and disclosures, and general corporate matters. She then followed an opportunity to join the environmental transactional group of the Houston office of Kirkland & Ellis LLP, where she primarily represented private equity clients, advising on environmental and worker health and safety risks in transactions.
There, Reeves-Sobers hit her stride, working on the Kirkland team that advised global chemical company LyondellBasell Industries NV on its agreement to form a joint venture with another international chemicals and energy company, Sasol Ltd. It was a complex $2 billion deal and came at a complex time: It was during the height of COVID-19, as Reeves-Sobers learned she was expecting her second child, and as two hurricanes hit the area.
But the success of the deal catapulted Reeves-Sobers to partnership at the firm.
We recently caught up with the alumna, whose ties to Texas Law remain strong, including a role on the Alumni Association’s executive committee.
Environmental law has long piqued your interest. When did it first appear on your radar?
Before law school, I worked for five years in-house at power management company Eaton Corp. in Cleveland as a paralegal for environmental health and safety lawyers. So when I got to law school, I sort of knew I wanted to do environmental law. But it wasn’t until I started participating in summer programs at Texas Law—the various summer associate positions I held during my 1L and 2L summers—and taking classes that I really found myself leaning more toward the transactional side. Environmental law is complex, the regulations are always changing and evolving, and there’s so much going on with the energy and climate transition. It’s a really cool specialty to stay on top of.
Since graduation, how did you navigate your career while staying true to your core interests?
Two years into my first job, I found myself not quite doing what I thought I wanted to do. I was doing more of the regulatory and quasi-litigation work than transactional work. I spoke to a few of my mentors at Baker Botts, and they helped me arrive at the decision to join the corporate group. So my last year there I was a corporate associate. I loved it, but I missed the environmental side. When a position came up at Kirkland that was the perfect intersection of exactly what I wanted to do—environmental law, but as a deal lawyer—I jumped at it. My career ended up taking off at Kirkland, and I enjoyed that role a lot.
Since then, you joined Clifford Chance. What’s your current day-to-day like?
No day is ever the same, which I love. I might help a client figure out if a target company is prone to having environmental liabilities, how that could impact their deal, and how to mitigate risk. It’s like a puzzle I get to put together. I can do transactional work, I can do regulatory, and if I ever decide that I’m off my rocker and want to do litigation, I could do that! Being in this space, you can dabble in a lot of different areas. I consider myself to be a deal lawyer who really loves environmental law, so my role at Clifford Chance is the perfect intersection. One of the cool things about the firm is working with international clients, and they have a lot of questions right now about making investments in U.S. projects. Part of my job is staying up to speed on breaking news. It’s a constantly changing landscape and an exciting time in environmental law.
What was it like to build an entirely new environmental practice?
It all sounds good when you’re initially talking about it. But when you have to actually figure out how to do it while also learning a new firm platform, that’s more challenging than I expected. The first few months were very, very challenging. I didn’t have any associates, though I had my eye on a few I wanted to hire. For a while, I was doing all of the administrative and legal work myself. Then I hired a senior associate and a third year.
Before there was an environmental group, my colleagues had to farm things out. Now, we celebrate our wins, like the work we’ve been able to keep in house. And we’re continuing to build. We have goals to get bigger and the ambition to pull in more regulatory work. I’m looking forward to us scaling that.
That’s exciting. Outside of the law, how do you like to spend your time?
I have the travel bug! I come from a very large, blended family of six sisters, and for travel my parents would pack up our van and drive us down to Florida to visit Disney World or Universal Studios. These are some of my favorite memories! Now, I like to carry that tradition forward in my own way with my own boys—they’re 13 and 3—we’re really enjoying family cruises. We did one for Christmas and I brought a pop-up Christmas tree with us. I love traveling with my boys and recreating—and even going further than—the trips I did with my parents when I was younger. Other recent trips have been to Cannes and Greece. My husband and I are planning a European cruise for our ninth wedding anniversary—sans kids!
Looking back to your time at Texas Law, what were your formative experiences?
Definitely being on the Texas Law Review. I’m a huge proponent of continuing to refine your writing skills and I picked up many of my skills from my time on that journal. I was also a two-term president of the Thurgood Marshall Legal Society. TMLS was one of my favorite experiences in law school, and it’s a great community that continues long after law school. Helping to ensure the pipeline of diverse attorneys continues to flow is an ongoing passion of mine.
What’s your best advice for today’s Texas Law students?
Try everything in law school. Take different kinds of classes and seek out opportunities, such as, for example, the drafting class, the litigation-focused class, and the Environmental Clinic. Even if you know you want to work at a firm, you will emerge a more well-rounded attorney if you’re exposed to public interest or government work. Then, by the time you’re choosing a job for post-graduation, you’re making a more informed decision. Really set yourself up to do something you’ll enjoy.