General Counsel, Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, Washington, D.C.

Having completed his undergraduate degree at WWS, Tim Reif was attracted back to the School for several reasons—the quality of the faculty; the multidisciplinary curriculum, in particular the economics requirements and the offerings in micro-, macro-, and international trade economics; and the small size of the program. For Reif, this third reason confirmed Princeton’s dedication to the highest quality instruction.

“The M.P.A. provided the perfect level of additional instruction to complement my legal training in the fields critical to my interest areas—law, public policy, and economics. In my second year in law school, I took a course on antitrust law with Harvey Goldschmid, now a member of the Securities and Exchange Commission. At the end of each unit, if not class, Goldschmid would say: ‘And the question you want to ask yourself is...’ And what followed, typically, was a litany of questions relating to whether the reasoning of the cases, or their outcomes, made sense from an economic or policy, as well as a strictly legal, perspective. This class confirmed for me that going into public service—which had been my original motivation for going to law school—remained my overriding interest.

“Two years after graduating, I argued my first case in federal court, presenting a defense for a U.S. federal agency of an economic form of analysis of whether imported products were ‘injuring’ a U.S. industry. I put to good use the M.P.A.'s training in microeconomics. After that, I moved on to address broader international trade issues for the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative and then the Ways and Means Committee, negotiating, and then implementing in Congress, agreements such as the World Trade Organization and the North American Free Trade Agreement.

“The program is a superb tool if you know how to use it. I believe in the intrinsic value of learning and knowledge; however, I also believe that at a graduate level it is important—perhaps critical—to have a clear and relatively specific goal of how to apply the knowledge and skills provided. The environment of the program, the School, the faculty, and fellow students, all were intensively focused on issues of public policy. It is a highly stimulating environment intellectually, and reinforced the basic instincts among most of the students to want to use the learning and skills to advance the public interest through government and public service.”