Yakoob on 17/5/2011 at 03:16

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I dont know what half of the big words thrown in this thread mean, but I am more hooked on the CCCToad <-> Rug Burn Junky banter than the last season of Lost!

demagogue on 17/5/2011 at 03:58

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Well I started at the US State Department's legal office ("L"), then back and forth among NGOs, IOs and academic fellowships, some more on the lawyer end, others more researcher/academic end. It's one of the less stable tracks you could take though and there's some luck involved.

What it involves? All sorts of things... negotiating treaties (mercury treaty is going on right now), or treaty interpretation (Is creating a joint-patent under an int'l science treaty "disposing US property" requiring House approval under the Constitution?), litigating cases under int'l law (like torture claims, or WTO trade cases). Depends so much on the field ... int'l environmental law, human rights law, int'l economic law, trade law, int'l IP law, law of armed conflict. My two big fields have been Int'l Environmental law & Human Rights law, but I've done a little of practically everything at one time or another.

It's the most interesting field of law for me, both how interesting the issues are and the actual kind of work you do, or I probably wouldn't have stuck with it. I think it and Con Law are the two most interesting fields, but probably also the hardest to pull off professionally. You practically have to go for broke on them; that is, put all your eggs in that basket to distinguish yourself, which is really rolling the dice since if you don't get in that niche (and maybe 8/10? that try don't, and that's just counting people out of the top 10 schools) the background won't help you for most jobs. But if you're interested in them, you may as well take a course or few to get a background that you can build on later.

For as much shit as RBJ was giving JAG (probably justified) they do get to do some law of armed conflict, which is part of PIL. Otherwise, it's not the sort of thing most jobs out there will ever get into. If you're doing anything involving international transactions, then you'd be doing some private international law & choice of law stuff, which can also get interesting, and more likely (the in-house dept for any multinational company & firms with multinat'l clients will do it).

The traditional corporate law track is playing your cards better as for what's actually useful to the job market. But you know whatever job you get, you can always start publishing articles in the field or issue that interests you and make a name for yourself; then that gives you a way in, once people starting thinking of you as "the guy that knows about X". (That's where I was going with "may as well take a course to build on later".)

I should probably be harsher on your chances like RBJ, but I can't blame people in being interested in what's honestly interesting.

demagogue on 17/5/2011 at 04:42

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There are firms that do ConLaw stuff, any group doing civil rights stuff, municipal or agency lawyers will probably do some of it. It's not my bag so I don't know so well.

By "more likely" I explained with the ()'s, any firm that has clients doing stuff crossing borders, and any in-house lawyers where their company is doing anything crossing borders... They'll probably have to get into choice of law and private int'l law stuff in some form, at some point. Just means good chances to do that kind of thing if you get into one of those kinds of jobs, and that's a wide field.

I mean, in-house lawyers (AFAIK) are generalists. You don't pick a field. You do whatever they need. So if you're working for a company that does a lot of int'l transactions, you'll do a lot of that kind of work. At a firm, lawyers do have focuses (even then they can rotate, and anyway they probably aren't hiring you because of a focus you got from lawschool, a JD is a generalist degree, but they just put you wherever they need people and it evolves from there), then some focuses can be more prone to int'l work than others... But transactional work, contracts, litigation, M&A, all of those sorts of things can have int'l issues if the clients are doing the thing across borders. If you really wanted to maximize your chances doing int'l transaction work, you'd work overseas, like my US friend works for Samsung in Seoul going over all the contracts with US operations; and other friends work for law firms in Asia, and most of their work is again going to be clients doing transactions with the US. So I imagine a lot of their work brings in choice of law stuff and some private int'l law issues.

Kuuso on 3/6/2011 at 00:43

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It's funny how US students need to drive themselves into debt, when here you just need to get into uni to survive. Okay, it's getting worse now, students practically need a summer job to live the months they're off uni (gasp). I'm not familiar with US education system, but to my knowledge, you need to have a bachelor's before you take this LSAT that gets you in the "real" law school. Correct? Weird stuff.

If you want advice, my girlfriend got into Turku Law School by attending a course with schedules and extensive materials (held by the senior students of the Uni) and reading 8-12 hours a day with practice exams, lectures and group works.

Bobotsin on 3/6/2011 at 02:00

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You probably would not, in all intents and purposes, want to know the answer to that question. Too much Jungian analysis for one, non-psychiatric related forum.