Patrick Oh: From litigator to founder to sustainability compliance leader

When Patrick Oh reflects on his work, he begins somewhere you might not expect from a compliance executive at one of the world's largest banks: creative writing. Before studying law, Patrick completed a master’s degree in poetry, an experience that cultivated a creative perspective he has carried throughout his career. He joined Freshfields' developing New York litigation practice in 2010. He then went on to co-found a startup, spent seven years navigating emerging regulatory issues at JPMorgan, and today has a lead sustainability compliance role at Morgan Stanley.

While poetry taught Patrick to see the world through a creative lens, it was his grandfather in Seoul who inspired him to pursue a career in law.

The man who shaped his thinking

Patrick’s grandfather was a lawyer and prosecutor who lived through colonial rule, fled communism, survived political exile and returned as a government advisor deeply involved in the building of South Korean democracy.

"What he survived and persevered through was just unbelievable," Patrick recalls. Even after a long and distinguished career, his grandfather continued showing up at the office because he genuinely loved the work. "He was one of those people who just never wanted to stop. He loved what he did."

A childhood photo of Patrick with his grandfather.

For Patrick, that example left a lasting impression. It wasn't simply about professional achievement. It was about remaining curious, continuing to learn and finding purpose in the work itself. Those lessons would stay with him as he began building a career of his own.

A startup within a giant

When Patrick joined Freshfields in 2010, he was drawn by the opportunity to be a part of a New York civil litigation practice that was still taking shape.

“There was a startup feel to it, within a global firm,” he says. “It was a really unique opportunity.”

The firm’s reach and environment meant early responsibility with matters that were both technically demanding and deeply human in scope. One case that still stands out involved defending a European government’s actions to stabilize its economy in the depths of the credit crisis – a case that required deep research and creative thinking to craft a successful strategy. Another memorable case involved a Brooklyn artist whose artwork had been wrongfully held by a Viennese gallerist. The Freshfields pro bono team fought the case for months. “We finally received these crates from a courier service with all of his artwork back,” Patrick says. “And we were there with him when he opened the crates.”

What Patrick credits most to his Freshfields years is harder to point to on a CV. Senior colleagues helped him understand the shift from competence to judgment, and for Patrick, that shift has become something close to a career philosophy. "It's not just about being good at the job," he explains. "It's also learning how to turn that competency into being a good advisor, a good partner to your client and having good judgment." That, he adds, is ultimately what clients come to a lawyer for: the capacity to help them find a way through when there is no playbook. The friendships forged alongside those lessons have lasted just as long. Seeing his Freshfields friends these days, he says, is simply a joy.

Following his curiosity

When Patrick left Freshfields in 2014, he co-founded an internet startup where he served simultaneously as a co-founder and in-house counsel. Patrick was motivated to apply his well-trained creativity to building something new with talented friends.

That approach continued on to seven years spent at JPMorgan, where a pattern took shape that would define the rest of his career. “A lot of times it’s about becoming an expert in a certain area that is newly developing and then helping the firm understand and implement whatever needs to be done — and these are usually emergent regulatory areas,” he says.

In August 2022, he became Executive Director and Americas Head of the Sustainability Compliance Office at Morgan Stanley, joining a team being built from the ground up in an area he first got involved in as a teenager. “It was similar to when I was getting into Freshfields,” he says. “I felt that energy.”

In practice, his role means working across an expanding set of issues that now fall under the sustainability umbrella. Patrick sees the field as spanning everything from data centers and AI to geothermal and nuclear energy, as well as emerging ideas such as space-based infrastructure. What grounds him is a longer view. "The idea of sustainability is inherently long-term, and it's inherently global," he says. "We have different approaches around the world. We'll have different approaches over different time periods. And that's, in a lot of ways, what makes the field exciting."

Find your equilibrium

For those navigating their own careers, Patrick offers a simple reminder: “Take a minute, find your equilibrium. Make sure you take a breath. Don’t feel like you have to constantly be sprinting in every direction.”

The love of writing, meanwhile, has never left him. He still reads and writes in his own time and has spent the past several years working on a novel or two. “Creative writing is kind of the thing that I will always do no matter what,” he says. It is the same instinct his grandfather modeled in that Seoul office — the refusal to stop learning, the refusal to stop showing up — carried forward into a career that has touched litigation, startups, banking and the future of the planet.

From the writing program in Oregon to the compliance desk at Morgan Stanley, the common thread has never been a carefully mapped plan. It has been a willingness to follow curiosity into unfamiliar territory and to trust the outcome would follow.