Frederick (Rick) Lorenz grew up in New York City and obtained his undergraduate and law degrees from Marquette University. He served in the US Marine Corps for twenty-seven years as a judge advocate, including a tour as an infantry company commander.

He obtained an LLM (With Highest Honors) from George Washington University in Land Use Management and Control and practiced environmental/land use law between 1982 and 1991. In 1992 he joined the First Marine Expeditionary Force and was the senior legal advisor for the United Nations authorized military intervention in Somalia, and returned there as senior legal advisor for the UN evacuation in 1995. In 1996 he served in Bosnia as a legal advisor for the NATO implementation force, and later was a Professor of Political Science at the National Defense University in Washington DC.

In 2000 he served as a United Nations legal affairs officer in Kosovo, working in the UN Civil Administration. He has been a visiting Professor of Law ant the University of Bergen, Norway, and a Visiting Scholar at the Irish Centre for Human Rights in Galway, Ireland.

He is currently a Senior Lecturer at the Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington, teaching courses in International Humanitarian Law and Water and Security in the Middle East. He is a also a Senior Fellow for the Public International Law and Policy Group, working in the Republic of Georgia, assisting the Georgian Government in peace negotiations with the Republic of Abkhazia. In the Summer of 2007 he was an election monitor in another self-proclaimed and disputed territory, the Republic of Nagorny Karabakh. In 2008 and 2009 he participated in a State Department program to provide legislative support  in the unrecognized Republic of Somaliland.