A Q&A Conversation With Mark Ludwikowski and Sally Alghazali

With a team consisting of 13 nationalities and a dozen languages, Clark Hill’s International Trade roster embodies the diversity and global reach of its clients.

The group features several unique stories from attorneys who made their way to the United States while often fleeing from political or civil unrest.

In this Q&A Series, attorneys will discuss their backgrounds, how they settled in the United States, and eventually decided to practice international trade law as a career.

In this first installment, Member Mark Ludwikowski (Poland) and Associate Sally Alghazali (Iraq) detail their pasts and discuss their present practices.

Sally, let’s start with your story of fleeing Iraq.

Alghazali: I come from a family of musicians and as the civil war picked up in Iraq in 2005 after the U.S. invasion, we got death threats that we should either stop playing music or flee the country. So obviously we decided to flee the country. We hopped into a GMC and drove to Amman, Jordan. From there we applied for refugee status to move to the United States, which took nine years.

We didn’t plan to leave Iraq for long, but things never settled down so we didn’t have much of a choice. Our father stayed in Iraq though and is still there. He’s continued to play the violin professionally. He visited us in Jordan quite a bit to be with our mom as she was undergoing cancer treatments.

How did your passion for music help you learn English?

Alghazali: I had to restart my education in the US, but I originally learned English from hip-hop music. I didn’t know English when I was in Iraq and Jordan, just the alphabet and very basic concepts. But I was very interested in hip-hop music and that’s how I learned English. When I came to the US I realized that’s not the proper way to learn English so I took a lot of ESL classes to kind of tone it down, but that’s how I started.

My siblings and I continued to play our instruments and I wound up playing the violin at the Grossmont Symphony Orchestra in San Diego until law school started to take up too much of my time.

Mark, your story deals more with political viewpoints, can you detail your family background?

I’m originally from Krakow, Poland, and my family left there in 1982. Poland was under martial law and was communist at the time. My father was anti-communist, and whoever was anti-communist was automatically perceived as a threat.

The secret police were increasingly scrutinizing him because he was a professor and a non-communist, which put him under their focus. At the time he was corresponding with colleagues in the US. He had gone to the US in 1981 and lectured at Stanford and several other places mostly about the effects of communism in Poland.

How did those lectures serve as a way out for your family?

At that time, one of the only ways you could leave Poland while it was under martial law was if you had an unfulfilled foreign contract, and my dad still had more lectures to give in the US after the 1981 visit.

Ironically my and Sally’s stories cross in an unexpected way. Most of these unfulfilled contracts involved Polish engineers going to Iraq to build Saddam Hussein’s palaces. The exclusion to leave Poland was aimed at the engineers going to Iraq. My dad argued that the exclusion should not just apply to engineers, but also to all Polish citizens who had unfinished contracts overseas.

My dad’s former students were involved in the administration of the city of Krakow and were instrumental in persuading the authorities to allow us to temporarily leave for the US for four months. But we never returned.

Where did you end up settling first in the US?

My dad had a strong connection with political philosopher Russell Kirk, who lived in mid-Michigan at that time, so we decided to live there for a few months initially. Russell and my dad had frequently exchanged letters by way of the US Consulate in Krakow which just happened to be across the street from our house. One of those letters from Russell included an invitation to lecture in the US, and that was very important for helping us move.

After Michigan, we moved to California so my dad could lecture at Stanford. Then we moved to Pennsylvania so he could teach at Elizabethtown College before ending up in DC to teach at a Catholic university.

Switching topics, how did each of you pursue a career in international trade law?

Alghazali: I’ve always wanted to be an international law attorney and international trade was something that I discovered in law school. One of the things that I wanted to do as an attorney when I went to law school was to become an international human rights attorney, and throughout the process, I realized that human rights are not something that people would care about as much unless money is involved so I realized that the area that would force people to uphold human rights is international trade.

Ludwikowski: Well, my dad had to pry me away from working on a dude ranch in Wyoming after getting my undergraduate degree. I wound up in law school and initially had interviews and got an offer with the FBI, which I thought would be more interesting than a traditional law practice as it was around the time of the 9/11 attacks. My start with the FBI got delayed a bit though while my wife was finishing up her degree. In the meantime, I got a job with the Department of Commerce working on international trade cases. I turned that into an associate position with a boutique trade firm in D.C. and had to turn down the FBI when they were ready for me.

To focus on the international trade practice, how would you summarize your team’s work?

Ludwikowski: Most of our work involves helping US companies import foreign products and goods. International trade involves goods, not people like immigration. We have worked on so many cases that I can walk around my house and easily identify which products are subject to special duties. We help US importers sources those products in a compliant manner while minimizing their duty exposure. We also represent foreign suppliers and foreign makers of those products in investigations. Finally, we also work with foreign governments that are accused of unfairly subsidizing their industries.

What is a key topic affecting your work with international trade currently?

Forced labor. Specifically the involvement of forced labor in the international supply chain, and it’s mostly directed at China. Trump and now Biden have focused on this by saying we won’t accept goods made with forced labor, particularly in China. It’s ballooned into a huge issue in all sorts of industries, and companies have to prove to customs officials that no part of their products was made with forced labor at any point in the supply chain. It’s led to a chilling effect where companies will avoid sourcing from China at all.

To continue on that note, what kind of work will your team be taking on with the recently launched human rights practice?

Alghazali: With many more laws enforcing human rights in business practices, we established a sub-practice group under our international trade group that focuses on the intersection between business and human rights. Today, companies not only face reputational harm for failure to promote and respect human rights in their businesses, but they also face legal liability and significant financial harm. With our Business and Human Rights practice group, we advise companies on how these new changes impact their business and how they can promote human and labor rights while conducting responsible business practices.