Thomas Daechsel, Law’20, spent the summer deeply invested in the laws of global finance. As an intern with the Royal Bank of Canada’s Investor & Treasury Services group in Luxembourg, he gained lots of practical experience working alongside the international organization’s legal team led by fellow grad Michael Schweiger, Law’04. 

They both spoke with Queen’s Law Reports about the mutually beneficial internship experience.

Tom, what attracted you to this internship opportunity?

Daechsel: I was really interested in getting a unique experience in the summer after my first year with Queen’s Law. My preferences were focused on an in-house legal role in the financial services or banking industry. Despite my narrow specifications, our career development office was fantastic in helping me begin my search and initial outreach. Coincidentally, the RBC role in Luxembourg presented itself shortly after. The internship was precisely what I was looking for and had the added benefit of being in a unique location. Ultimately, making the decision was easy, and the opportunity was too good to pass up.
 
Tom, what work were you doing as an intern, and how did it contribute to the organization’s goals?
 
Daechsel: RBC Investor & Treasury Services is a top-10 global custodian bank that provides services to institutional investors. It represents RBC’s most significant operations within Europe. Michael, a proud Queen’s Law graduate, manages a team of 15 lawyers across multiple jurisdictions and is responsible for all legal issues within Continental Europe and the Channel Islands. His efforts in making sure I was integrated into the team certainly showed that the support you receive from the Queen’s Law community has no real geographical limits. 

As an intern, I was able to work closely with the legal group and gain exposure to a wide variety of projects. Ultimately, my time in Luxembourg over the summer proved to be timely. New data protection regulations in Europe meant I was able to jump right in and contribute to RBC’s strategic decisions around compliance and implementation of the necessary data controls. At the same time, I helped prepare a conference on corporate governance regulation for global financial institutions. My luck continued when the bank was involved in a few syndicate loan and cross-border transactions, which I had the opportunity to help review and draft. Finally, I was trusted to help lead a global project to standardize client contracts across Canada, the U.K., Ireland, and Luxembourg. This required coordinating with executives throughout the RBC group to define the bank’s commercial positions. The team was great about including me on key files and showed me a high level of trust to contribute to the work. It was a great way to learn to adapt quickly and I was able to help provide clear and efficient guidance to both clients and the bank itself, which is critical in the financial service industry. 
 
Tom, what did you find most rewarding about this work?
 
Daechsel: With the in-house capacity, the Luxembourg legal team was serving not only the bank’s clients but the bank itself. In a way, it flips the client-oriented approach on its head when your biggest client is the company you are working for. The information and advice you provide directly impacts your own business, and seeing how the legal team operated within that reality and how this facilitated pragmatic decision-making was a valuable experience. In both instances, the focus remains on client satisfaction. The benefit of this focus is having the opportunity to be creative in your solutions to incorporate client needs without sacrificing legal accuracy. I learned quickly that in the transactional world you are working with, not against, the client to find a solution that works for both parties. Finding these solutions was, without a doubt, rewarding.

Michael, how would describe Tom’s contributions as an intern to RBC Investor Services Bank?

Schweiger: Tom was extremely motivated and really hit the ground running. As a result, he was able to have a variety of experiences with all of the lawyers in my team as well as our key business partners. Critical components for a successful internship include ‎strong analytical thinking, attention to detail, and reliability. Tom demonstrated all of those skills and together with his enthusiasm he was able to help lead a global project, brief our senior executives, and work with our client-facing staff. The support he brought to us was tremendous and it is always helpful to have a fresh perspective within the team.