Homin Lee

Shareholder, Greenberg Traurig

40 Under 40 Category: Legal Services

Homin Lee focuses his practice on representing public and private borrowers, private equity sponsors, lead arrangers, lenders, including investment banks, finance companies and private debt funds, in connection with commercial and corporate finance transactions, syndicated and bilateral loan financings, including senior secured financings, first lien and second lien financings, domestic and cross-border financings, unsecured financings, acquisition financings, working capital financings (asset-based and cash flow) and bridge financings.

Homin has industry experience in a variety of business sectors including energy, defense, technology and software, datacenters, retail, transportation and logistics, food and beverage, and manufacturing and industrials.  Homin received his J.D. from New York University School of Law in 2009.  Homin received his B.A., magna cum laude, from Harvard College in 2005.  Homin lives in Los Angeles, CA, with his wife and three daughters.  

How do you define a good leader? 

Good leadership begins with the leader’s character and ability to successfully direct a group of individuals towards a common goal that is beneficial, initially to internal team members and ultimately to future members of the community and broader society.  

Character extends beyond an individual’s personality traits and reflects a continuously evolving product of a leader’s collective responses, not only to adversity and challenges, but also to ordinary course encounters and daily interactions with others.  While engaging in such everyday communications, a good leader should focus on being attentive to each team member’s tendencies and individualized needs in order to ensure that such leader is well-positioned to accurately represent the group’s collective stance on any given issue.  An open line of communication also promotes consensus-building within the group and develops a level of loyalty and trust within the team.  

Gearing a team towards success also requires efficient management of resources and allocation of responsibilities among team members.  Acceptance of roles by team members follows naturally when they acknowledge the authority and competence of a leader, which is why a good leader should be able to listen and appreciate differing viewpoints, absorb and process feedback, and yet be fully capable of generating an original and independent directive and response that team members can respect and follow.  

What is the best professional advice you have been given and how have you implemented it? 

“You only have one professional reputation” is the best professional advice that I received from a law school professor before beginning my career as a corporate finance attorney.  

I understood such “reputation” to encompass the technical competence and moral integrity of being a professional in the legal industry. 

In order to develop professional competence earlier in my career, I focused on developing fluency in finance, corporate law and the Uniform Commercial Code.  I have also actively participated in Financial Lawyers Conference, Secured Finance Network and other finance law industry conferences and events, and continue to monitor releases and reports announced by the Loan Syndications and Trading Association and Alternative Reference Rates Committee on a regular basis.  

The foregoing phrase also emphasized the difficulty of not only building up a reputation, but also maintaining a consistently high level of competence and integrity.  The fear of becoming complacent motivates me to stay ahead of current developments and trends in the market, such as delving into PPP loan carve-outs during the early phases of the recent pandemic, and to further expand into new areas of expertise and industry sectors, such as cryptocurrencies and green energy.  

What is your definition of success?

While I am still figuring out how to define success, I have tried to think beyond defining success in terms of short-term, career-related achievements and, instead, have focused on adopting a holistic view that could apply to a broader set of fact patterns.       

I rely heavily on the Aristotelian concept of Teleology and continue to delve into how I can fulfill purposes assigned to me under various roles that I have assumed.  For instance, I continue to examine what my end goal of being a husband, father of three children, son, partner at a law firm, member and leader of different groups and a person of faith should be.  

The pursuit of each of these objectives for each different role may at times be mutually complementary, and occasionally be conflictive.  In short, my understanding of success is that it is an ongoing process of internal evaluation and continuous balancing of the pursuit of often competing but interconnected goals.