Hello,
I was recently asked by a law student for some career advice on how to get a job internationally, and in particular, how to get involved in international (public and private) legal work.
If anyone finds this sort of information helpful, please let me know. While my legal background is largely doing multinational corporate work, particularly in the IT sector, here are my ideas outlining some generic things to think about in terms of your career planning, and some key approaches to pursuing these types of careers.
My background. For the past several years, I have worked in primarily in London, and secondarily in Paris, for a very large telecommunications company. I was originally working for another one of this companies’ affiliates in USA, and was able to move internally to another one of their companies in the UK. This made it much easier for me to move, especially in terms of sorting out work visas and professional qualifications, etc.
Three Career Principles to Never Forget. In terms of general career advice, there are three principles which you must keep in mind to work in international law related field. While I recognize the risk of my sharing with you a ‘firm grasp of the obvious’ (and I can almost hear some cringing already), most law students do not receive this message framed in this sort of a utilitarian light. So, here it goes:
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The sole purpose of your first Legal job is to enable you to get a better second Legal job.
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It is all about Brand. Your CV / Resume is a personal marketing tool. It is your personal ‘brand’. The choice of your first job should strongly take into account the value which the ‘brand’ of your new employer will add to your CV, and your future ambitions. This lasts for decades.
- You cannot save the world if you cannot pay the bills. Public international law has some of the most interesting legal work around. Unfortunately, or fortunately, it also has a tendency to attract incredibly brilliant people who will work for a minimum salary. If you are independently wealthy, then great, no problem. If you have large education debts, please do not forget this fact will undoubtedly impact your choice of jobs in the short term, even if not necessarily in the longer term.
Your first Legal job. Getting your first Legal job is always a nerve wracking experience at best, particularly if you want to take a track other than going directly into a large law firm. Unfortunately, nearly all major law schools are set up to build a funnel for large firms. For your interests, even if you do not wish to ‘end up’ in a law firm or major global corporation, it might make considerable sense for you to go out to find the best ‘brand’ firm which you can, either in the US, UK or elsewhere. You can extract the majority of the benefits of making this step by working at a firm for exactly two years (or three years, if in New York City) doing any type of work - - even better if they have a public international law practice, but this is not required. By then, you will have ‘checked the box’ on your CV, and you can happily move on to what you really want to do. This is by far is the safest option, and also incidentally, completes one of the requirements enabling you to be admitted to practice in other common law countries (e.g. the UK). I’m not certain whether this is helpful in other civil law countries, but I suspect it would be.
There is no question that working at a law firm, and potentially billing in ‘6 minute’ increments gets very tiring. Reviewing e.g. commercial leases can be even less fun than watching paint dry. But this said, in any event, you will probably be practicing law for a very long time anyway. Having a good initial first employer on your CV, who has ‘trained’ you is always a good investment for your CV even if not necessarily beneficial in practice to you.
As a lawyer who has graduated from a US law school, you are able to come to Europe with a well respected professional background (speaking generally). In terms of global perceptions, US lawyers are highly respected, maybe in a similar form of the admiration to being world-class in other professions to e.g. French engineers, British accountants, or Indian mathematicians - - not to foster bad stereotypes… But, needless to say, the USA Legal professional qualification travels well around the world, particularly among global employers.
This being said, there is a particular area of confusion when you first come out of law school. Legal training is not the same around the world, meaning in France, a jurist has may have only attended the equivalent of undergrad and not graduate school (in terms of USA style nomenclature, depending on their qualifications). In the UK, while there are some permutations, most young associates at large law firms will attend around a year and a half or so of graduate school, followed by two years of a training contract to learn how to practice law. In Germany, many associates hold an LLM, or a PHD, at minimum, staying in school much longer. While you probably can research the differences in the number of years of schooling better than me, you should particularly aware of this issue when you turn up to speak with a new potential employer in Europe. There is a risk of being perceived as wanting to find only a training contract, which is not needed in the case of a USA law school graduate. After your first job, the timing issue goes away as you accumulate more PQE (Post Qualification Experience). The same is true in France, as I understand it.
