Cybersecurity lawyer Michael Bahar will soon be headed to Afghanistan for his third overseas deployment with the U.S. Navy in the last 15 years.

But this will be the first time his service to the country will interrupt his time in private practice: Washington, D.C.-based Bahar, a longtime adviser to both the executive and legislative branches, joined Eversheds Sutherland to lead its U.S. cybersecurity team in 2017.

Michael Bahar, Eversheds Sutherland 

On this go-around, he'll be serving as deputy legal adviser to four-star Gen. Austin Miller, the commander of the NATO-led Resolute Support mission and the U.S. forces in the country.

Bahar acknowledged the challenge of being separated from family and work for eight months, particularly considering his relatively recent arrival at the firm.

“You miss your kids, you miss your family, you miss your co-workers,” he said. “It's easy to fall into the trap of 'Why me, why again? I've already done this, why a third time?'”

But Bahar emphasized the benefits that will stem from time engaging with confidential information, responding to emerging crises, and being tuned into the rapidly evolving geopolitical situation in central Asia.

“To have a cybersecurity and national security practice and have the opportunity to go back and refresh your skills is actually valuable,” he said. “Not to take away from the fact that I'll be gone, but it is a further investment in the practice group.”

He also credited the transatlantic firm with putting its money where its mouth is on the hot-button topic of diversity.

“Eversheds really takes diversity seriously; and, of course, veterans status is really a diversity factor as well,” he said.

Bahar spoke Friday, a week after he'd stepped away from the firm's D.C. office. After five days of in-processing in Norfolk, Virginia, he was preparing to get on a bus the next day to Fort Jackson in South Carolina, where he is to spend three weeks in training before shipping out to Kabul, Afghanistan, at the start of August.

This will be his second deployment in Afghanistan. He served four months there with a special operations task force in 2012, following a two-year spell in the White House as deputy legal adviser to the National Security Council under President Barack Obama.

Bahar put his application in with the Navy after the 9/11 attacks occurred at the start of his third year of law school. Upon graduation, he spent a brief spell as an associate at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, but after the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, he pushed to be placed in active duty, which began in June of that year.

His first deployment came two years later as a staff judge advocate with the Nassau Expeditionary Strike Group, a fleet ranging from six to eight ships in the Persian Gulf and the Horn of Africa. While at sea, the group captured the first pirates apprehended by the U.S. Navy in 150 years, and Bahar wound up testifying against them in court in Mombasa, Kenya, as well as overseeing their repatriation to Somalia, a nation not recognized by the U.S. at the time.

Bahar later had opportunity to combine his lessons from the field with his legal experience as the minority staff director and general counsel of the U.S. House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, where he served from his return from Afghanistan in late 2012 until joining Eversheds in June 2017. There he was the lead drafter and negotiator for the Cybersecurity Act of 2015 and a substantial surveillance reform measure.

The move to Eversheds gave him the opportunity to leverage those 14 years of experience in the military and government.

“Cybersecurity is also crisis management: how to lead a global organization in, essentially, an existential crisis like a cyberattack,” Bahar said. “Whether at the White House or the military, I've done that.”

Many of the 110 lawyers in the firm's global cybersecurity practice share similar backgrounds.

“There's a real core group of us who were in government, with the same experiences in deep crises and staying cool under pressure,” he said.

His immediate replacement has experience in a high-profile private sector crisis: deputy practice head Mark Thibodeaux was Enron's chief information officer. Recently hired SDNY cybercrimes prosecutor Sarah Paul will also step into the breach, as will veteran insurance specialist Mary Jane Wilson-Bilik. Eversheds can also draw on international counterparts, like London-based co-chair Paula Barrett.

This deep bench can help maintain the flow of work in a way that might be harder for a midsize firm with a leader in a similar position. Greg Rinckey, founding partner of New York's Tully Rinckey, saw his fellow founding partner Matthew Tully depart on three deployments since the firm's founding in 2004, serving in Iraq, Egypt and Afghanistan.

“In a smaller firm, when you're deployed, sometimes your business can dry up,” he said.

There's also the question of clients' patience for being shuttled between attorneys, even if they profess to understand the import of military service.

Bahar hopes to be present for some positive developments in the war in Afghanistan, now in its 18th year.

“Maybe I'll be able to contribute to the peace and reconciliation process,” he said. “That would be historic, and certainly I hope I can bring value to the table when I'm there.”

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