Lisa Schmidt Featured on WDEL’s Open for Business
August 19, 2026
Firm News
Lisa Schmidt was recently featured on WDEL’s Open for Business where she discussed the enduring strength of Delaware’s corporate franchise, the importance of firm culture, and the collaborative spirit behind the Delaware way.
The below transcript has been lightly edited to improve readability. The full recording can be found here.
Peter MacArthur: This is Delaware News and Issues for the First State. Here is Peter MacArthur. Hi, welcome to DelAWARE. It is Wednesday, August twelfth. I am Peter MacArthur. Time for Open for Business, brought to you by Delaware Prosperity Partnership, and today we are welcoming in Lisa Schmidt. She is with Richards, Layton & Finger and is chair of the Performance Oversight Committee there. Thanks for coming in, appreciate it.
Lisa Schmidt: Thanks for having me, Peter.
Peter: That is quite the job title, and I think it probably entails a little bit. Why don’t we start by having you give us an overview of what you do day to day?
Lisa: Sure. My day job is a corporate litigator at Richards, Layton & Finger. I’ve been there for thirty five years, and that has been my career the whole time. But I also moved into the administrative side of law and served as the firm president for a three-year term. And I am now our immediate past president, so still involved on the administrative side.
Peter: What is it about the Chancery Court and corporate law that makes your firm’s work a little bit distinct from some other states?
Lisa: Our firm has been around now for one hundred and twenty seven years, and our firm grew with the growth of the Delaware franchise and Delaware becoming the corporate capital of the world, so it’s hard to point to any of our practices that don’t touch on that franchise. We work with businesses to incorporate and to deal with transactional issues. and then all of our litigation practices touch the franchise. Not just our corporate chancery practice, but our bankruptcy practice because companies incorporate in Delaware, our bankruptcy court in Delaware is an appropriate jurisdiction; for companies incorporated in Delaware who have IP issues, our district court. And so, all of our practices grew with the growth of the franchise over the last hundred years.
Peter: So, this isn’t necessarily a totally accurate imagery, but I am seeing bigger piles on people’s desks than there would have been a decade ago.
Lisa: True, although with technology we’re trying to reduce those piles.
Peter: Well, what about your own personal journey? You obviously had aspirations to be in law. Was your decision to go this route, or were you kind of carried this way in some ways?
Lisa: I was carried this way, really. I didn’t know much about the Delaware practice when I went to law school. No one in my family was an attorney. When I took Corporations Law and started reading cases, I saw they were all out of courts in Delaware. I am from New England, and I didn’t want a big city, so I thought, well, I’ll come give it a shot. So, I came to interview — came here after law school and never looked back.
Peter: You mentioned being a past president of Richards, Layton & Finger. First of all, I didn’t realize that was a thing within law firms. Talk about that part of your duties and how you went about it from a leadership role.
Lisa: I grew into the role over time, and I had tremendous mentors as a young attorney, giants of the corporate bar who set wonderful examples of leadership, of leadership in the community, of being present. And for someone who came to this community, it was really important to me to put roots down. With that example, it was a gradual process. I became involved in firm committees. I ran our hiring. I ran our operations. Then when my partners asked me to head up the firm as firm president, it was a daunting opportunity. It’s a big business, but I was so committed to the future of the firm and maintaining our culture that I agreed.
Peter: It sounds like it would be daunting. There are, I am sure, many things that you knew about the day-to-day of the firm by then, but now you are going kind of next level. You are scraping off a couple more layers of things, and to me, it sounds like it could be sometimes a very different job than the one you were used to.
Lisa: Very different but I think suited to my personality. I am very much a people person. Really having the opportunity to engage with all of our folks — and we’re fortunate, we have many very long-term employees, both on the legal side and the non-legal side —being able to work with them day to day, I found very rewarding.
Peter: And that’s the hard thing for a lot of people is, I don’t know if you would call it a delegation, but trusting in your team members enough to take some of the weight off.
Lisa: You have to, and I think any business becomes better through collaboration and through trusting and empowering those to help you make the best decisions for the organization.
Peter: Sure. Were there any things that you changed on a considerable level while you were president?
Lisa: Timing is everything, right? We serve as the executive vice president before becoming president. So, I worked closely with Doneene Damon, who was president at the time through COVID, and that was certainly challenging. Then I had the task of bringing everyone back to the office. And it was something we were always committed to doing, but people became very comfortable working from home those couple of years. So, I had to make sure people understood the value in coming back. We got everyone back to the office and then immediately undertook a top-to-bottom renovation of our office space. But we made sure that we were thoughtful in the design because the value of being in the office is the ability to collaborate face to face, so we created space to encourage that. And so that was certainly the greatest challenge, I thought, in my term.
Peter: Let me just ask you one more thing about that. It was very much a deliberate design that you set up. There was a much more concerted effort here to build a comfort zone for your people to some level.
Lisa: Exactly, and when I started before everyone had a computer on their desk, the place where we collaborated was a big center table in our library. You go in there and you talk about what you are working on and get input from others. Now that we’re all in our offices with computers, I wanted to recreate those types of working spaces. We also had a very small lunchroom that no one really used, and I wanted a space where everyone could go. So, we have the Richards Layton cafe space on our ground level, and there is an outdoor patio. I love going down there any time of day to grab a coffee or soda. There are different groups of people collaborating, having a coffee or lunch, and I think it’s really served to bring us together.
Peter: That’s fantastic. I think a lot of people might imagine that within some of the work you do, there are a lot of people poring through files and such, and that maybe face to face isn’t that important. What you’re saying is that that’s not the case at all. It really is a very valuable component of being productive.
Lisa: Absolutely, and we built additional trial spaces which allow us to prepare for trial in a group setting because you’re most effective when you’re working together to pull the exhibit list or prep a witness. So we created those spaces as well which are fully booked all of the time.
Peter: The legal community here is known for its expertise in corporate and business law. People talk a lot about the Delaware way. Does that play into the legal community here as well?
Lisa: Absolutely. I’ve always thought of the Delaware way as this relationship with everyone you are working with in the community — a relationship of respect and trust. I think it’s become harder to maintain the Delaware way as the legal community has grown and people have come from outside, but we’re all very committed to it. Our court is very committed to it. They will quickly remind folks if they stray from the path of what is expected. And I think that’s what makes Delaware so special. There are people that you not only litigate with or against, but serve on bar commissions with, serve on court appointments with, or serve in the community on nonprofits with. Sometimes we take what we have for granted here because it really is special.
Peter: I can imagine that if you’re an outsider looking in, some of the relationships you talk to with people that might be considered opponents or foes or not allies, but still having a cooperative effort would be a surprising thing for other states to look in on because they can’t replicate it where they are necessarily.
Lisa: I think back to when I was a young associate, to one of the first or second cases I worked on. I was working with Charlie Richards, who was a giant of the corporate bar. And he asked me to call opposing counsel. He asked me to call the most senior lawyer on the other side and ask for something.
Peter: That wasn’t daunting at all.
Lisa: No, not at all. Joe Rosenbaum, he treated me like a peer. He wasn’t offended that there’s this young lawyer, three months out of law school calling and asking him something. And I thought, wow, that’s pretty special.
Peter: Are there mentors that shaped your philosophy of what law is, or maybe what it is not? Have you developed your own kind of theories about your feelings on criminal justice and law over the years? What did that transition over time look like?
Lisa: I think that there are so many people that shape your view throughout the course of your career. Early on, it was people like Charlie Richards, like Frank Balotti. When I look at the people that I worked with, they were all very different in style. And I always tell young associates to learn from those around you but develop what works for you. And that comes from the court too. We have a tremendous opportunity in Delaware to serve on arms of the court, and so you get to know the judges in a different setting than standing before them at the podium. And that also sets an example and shapes who you become as an attorney.
Peter: Do you find yourself passing down some of the same advice you got when you are talking to new associates?
Lisa: I try to, and they seem to listen.
Peter: If it’s good then, Lisa, it’s probably good now as far as advice goes.
Lisa: I try to, and I always want to be approachable, because I had the benefit of people who always had time for me.
Peter: This is a wide open question, but how would you characterize some of the ways law has changed in a couple of three decades.
Lisa: The pace of the practice, and I think it is much harder to be a young attorney now than it was when I came out of law school. When I arrived at the firm, even when we were working on expedited cases in the takeover era, when I finally got to go home, I went home. I didn’t have a cell phone or a Blackberry. And so now the practice really is twenty-four seven, and I think that is very challenging for all of us, but for our young attorneys especially. And then just really the volume of discovery when you are working in litigation, the volume of information that’s got to be exchanged. And then the caseload for our court has exploded, so it’s become much more challenging. And I think that part of the advice I give young people is you’ve got to carve out time.
Peter: You have to keep an eye on these, I hate to say “kids,” but you know what I am saying, the new recruits because they’ll just go, right? They’re in their twenties and they’re loaded with energy, they’re very excited about the project. But they can also end up on the wrong side of fatigue and everything else.
Lisa: But we’re so fortunate though, with a practice in Delaware, where you can live ten minutes from the office, twenty minutes from the office, and our practice enables us to manage our schedules to a large degree in terms of when we’re doing the amount of work we need to be done. I tell people, if your child has a game, go to the game and then come back or sign on later. I think Delaware gives us the opportunity to have more balance in what is a daunting career sometimes.
Peter: We are in Open for Business here on WDEL, brought to you by Delaware Prosperity Partnership, and we’re talking with Lisa Schmidt from Richards, Layton & Finger. Have you and your colleagues started to get a handle on what AI can do for you and what you don’t want it to do within your practice?
Lisa: We are all learning, and it creates challenges in the legal industry that are a bit unique because of protecting the attorney-client privilege. You have to make sure that the way you are using AI does not inadvertently waive a client privilege by loading information into a network that is not secure.
Peter: And I think there’s one way that perhaps we in the media and you in the legal field might share some concerns too. Certainly, there are tons of programs out there that can craft a news story for us but then comes the human involvement of needing to edit that to make sure that there’s nothing wrong, libelous, or anything else. And I’m guessing that applies tenfold when you’re talking about the legal community.
Lisa: Yes, we have guidelines in place, and everything pulled from AI has to be verified with human eyes and the human brain. Thinking about whether the proposition is actually accurate. It is something that we’re all learning and working hard to put guardrails in to make sure we get things right.
Peter: Let’s spend a couple of minutes on Delaware’s corporate franchise and maybe what everyday Delawareans can do to find out more and to utilize it. What would you lend as some advice on that?
Lisa: I live in this world day to day, so I’m very focused on how important the franchise is, and I think sometimes my neighbors might not be as focused. The franchise is a third of the state budget just in pure franchise taxes. So, think about funding schools and public safety and education. It’s a very important part of the budget. And it’s a very valuable asset, like cars are in Michigan or oil and gas in Texas. That’s why other states are now trying to compete with us. But it’s not even just the pure dollars that come in from the franchise taxes. It’s all of the other industries that are supported by the legal community that are employed by these companies. It’s hotels, it’s restaurants, it’s catering, it’s copy services, it’s graphic services. So, it really, in pure dollars, is even a larger industry than the bottom line on the general ledger.
Peter: Sure, and to that end, it really does pay for Delawareans who are not familiar to find out more, to invest some time to realize the implications it has perhaps on their lives they didn’t even know about.
Lisa: Absolutely, and I think the narrative has become a distrust for corporations, and you can’t really look at that in a vacuum because corporations are part of our franchise. I don’t think there is a state that really regulates the interests of corporations and shareholders better than Delaware does. We have one hundred years of case law, we have expert judges, and we have a secretary of state that is going to accommodate formations. It shouldn’t be either or; it shouldn’t be corporations or public safety. One feeds the other. And I think that Delaware does the best job in making sure that guardrails are in place and everyone’s interests are protected.
Peter: Most certainly. If there were some things, maybe some food for thought that you would leave listeners with in terms of why our legal, our corporate framework really matters to them personally, what would some of those things be? Just kind of giving people a heads-up or revealing some of the things that they don’t necessarily comprehend.
Lisa: As we were saying, it matters in terms of the revenue provided to the state to do things that are important to everyday Delawareans. I think some people don’t realize with the large legal community we have; we all provide a lot of pro bono legal services. Even though my day job is appearing in the Court of Chancery, I’ve also made time to represent children in the Chancery Court as a guardian ad litem. There are groups of attorneys who do wills for seniors. We all support the Combined Campaign for Justice, which funds all of our legal services agencies. So, there is a lot that is provided to the community from the legal industry besides just franchise taxes and trial teams supporting hotels.
Peter: Now that certainly makes sense. Lisa Schmidt joining us from Richards, Layton & Finger here on DelAWARE.