M. Christie Helmer

Chris Helmer is one of those unusual attorneys who maintain both a litigation and a business practice. She started practicing in the admiralty area, litigating charter party, collision, cargo damage, marine financing, and longshoremen's personal injury cases. Much of that work involved international issues. As the Oregon economy changed, so did Chris's practice. During the late 1980s, she represented the FSLIC, closing down insolvent savings and loan associations and bringing civil actions against their officers, directors, borrowers, and insurers. Litigating partnership dissolutions, real estate transactions gone awry, fraud claims, and a variety of business disputes followed, as did an active practice assisting clients to mitigate risk by understanding and clearly drafting their contracts in the first place.

When Oregon's global business reach expanded significantly in the 1990s, Chris moved to New York for ten months to obtain her LL.M. in international law from Columbia University, all the while maintaining a reduced practice and serving, through Miller Nash, as in-house counsel to a Daimler-Benz international financing subsidiary located in the New York metropolitan area. In addition to an active transnational and domestic litigation practice, Chris currently serves a number of multinational and smaller businesses and nonprofits with their international needs—entering foreign markets using subsidiaries, joint ventures, distribution networks, or simply sales; drafting sales agreements, foreign manufacturing agreements, and private labeling arrangements; drafting BIS export and CBP import compliance programs; defending Customs, export, and FCPA violations and conducting compliance investigations; managing difficult foreign litigation; and arbitrating international claims before foreign and domestic arbitral bodies.

Chris has been listed in The Best Lawyers in America for several years. She is also designated a "Super Lawyer" in the business litigation, international, and transportation/maritime practice areas by Oregon Super Lawyers magazine, published by Law & Politics, and was selected as Lewis & Clark Law School's "Distinguished Graduate" for 2008.