When it comes to dealing with change, Scott Offer, the general counsel and senior vice president of Motorola Mobility, is cool as a cucumber. That’s largely thanks to his childhood. With a father in Britain’s Royal Navy, Offer and his family moved frequently. He was born in Singapore, where his father was stationed during the conflicts between Indonesia and Malaysia in the early 1960s. Later, the family moved to Scotland and finally England. “I didn’t like moving as a kid—we moved every two or three years,” Offer says. “But in hindsight, it made me very resilient and flexible and able to adapt quickly.”
Offer’s resilience and innate curiosity eventually led him to study law at the London School of Economics and Political Science, University of London. After his studies, he joined a London firm, Boodle Hatfield, where he carried out his required two-year training contract. (Students in the U.K.’s law school system must complete such training with law firms before they can qualify for independent practice.) While at the firm, Offer worked on a variety of commercial work.
