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I am currently a first year law student at Boston University School of Law. I am potentially interested in pursuing a specialization in international law, but they do not allow us to choose any classes until second year, so I won't be able to fully explore my interests or to figure out my specialization until then. I do know for certain that I am going to study abroad the first semester of my third year either at Oxford or Bucerius Law School, which is in Hamburg, Germany. I only studied abroad for the summer in Prague while I was still at Penn, which was an amazing experience, but I regretted not taking a full semester or year abroad. So I hope to rectify that by taking advantage of abroad programs in law school. I am currently exploring public interest job opportunities abroad for this coming summer. Although I'm not sure of what firms or organizations I will look into yet (it is still early), here are some places students from BU law have worked at previously: International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (Netherlands), International Legal Affairs Division, Ministry of Justice (Korea), Amnesty International Japan, Cambodian Defenders Project, Alternative Dispute Resolution Clinic (Berlin, Germany). My long term career plans are to enter the private sector working at a large law firm upon graduation from law school, hopefully spending a year or two while working at an abroad office of the firm in Europe (I was a European History double major with IR and I studied German for a year at Penn my senior year out of pure interest and I hope to continue studying German by auditing undergraduate German classes while in law school and through going abroad). A lot of new legal territory is being forged in Europe as the EU continues to expand and I would love to be a part of it. I'd then be interested in working as in house counsel at some corporation, potentially in the auto industry like, for example, Mercedes Benz of North America. But that long term "plan" is certainly subject to change. I hope this helps, although I am still very much in the midst of figuring out my exact career path.
Shane St. Hill, Clas of 2007
After graduating from Penn, I received a job in the executive branch and moved to Washington D.C. I worked for the Office of Government Ethics, which ensures that executive branch employees comply with disclosure, bribery and election regulations. I specifically worked in the international department of the office, which helped foreign governments create ethics programs and implement anti-corruption laws. Our department also represented the U.S. Government in multilateral meetings, to provide answers on U.S. ethics and corruptions laws and regulations.
After one year of working for the Office of Government Ethics, I enrolled in law school at Georgetown University. I have accepted a permanent position with a law firm based out of London, Clifford Chance, to work on international litigation matters in their Washington D.C. office.
Inna Dexter, Class of 2004
I am currently a first-year associate at Patton Boggs, LLP, a leading international law firm in Washington, D.C. I work primarily on international commercial transactions and public policy projects.
Before joining the firm, I attended Georgetown University Law Center. While there, I focused on international law and worked part time at the State Department’s Office of the Legal Advisor, the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the Justice Department’s Office of Overseas Prosecutorial Development, Assistance and Training.
After graduating Penn in 2002 with a B.A. in International Relations (and minors in Chinese, Political Science, and Diplomatic History), I went to work at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington as a researcher for Dr. Bates Gill, the Freeman Chair in China Studies. While at CSIS, I worked on several China-related projects. In particular, I coordinated the Freeman Chair's project on China's Emergence in Central Asia. As such, I was the principal author of China's_New_Journey_to_the_West: Report_on_China's_Emergence_in_Central_Asia_and_Implications_for_U.S._Interests (August 2003). Since then, I have been published widely on China-Central Asia relations and have given presentations at Chinese and American think tanks and government departments on this topic.
After leaving CSIS, I founded the China-Eurasia Forum (CEF), a research organization focusing on China’s relationship with its neighbors. The group was supported by several U.S., Chinese, and Central Asian think tanks. I ran this program for two years. CEF is now run by SAIS’s Silk Road Project and publishes the CEF Quarterly. I currently serve as a Senior Advisor.
At the same time, as staring the CEF, I moved to Beijing to attend the IUP language program at Tsinghua University for a year. Following this year in China, I began my studies at Georgetown.
Matthew Oresman C’2002
After graduating from Penn I decided to go to law school with the hope of eventually practicing international law in some capacity. I went to the University Of Washington School Of Law. For my first summer I worked for an Italian law firm in Milan, Italy as a summer associate and for my second summer I worked for a law firm in Seattle, Washington working on both domestic and international corporate issues. I am set to graduate in June, 2008 with a concentration in the international legal track and have accepted my position at Perkins Coie in Seattle, where I will be working in corporate law and, hopefully, and specifically international corporate law.
Adam G, Class of 2005.
I am now a commercial litigator in an international law firm. The International Relations major influenced my career path by focusing my interests on international issues and politics across the globe. From my studies, I increased my analytic ability in areas that interested me and I was able to gain a breadth of knowledge on pertinent topics that I now deal with all the time in my career. The courses I took at Penn in the IR major -- especially writing my senior thesis -- spurred my interest in the legal aspects of international relations while at the same time honing my ability to use my analytic and writing skills which are extremely important in law school. Representing foreign clients in commercial transactions and international arbitrations is something that I could not be doing today without having majored in IR at Penn!
Andrew H. Reynard, Clas of 2002
I went into law, but then finding little opportunity to practice international law from Philadelphia, specialized in complex litigation.
Jay Stiefel
My IR degree proved invaluable to my immediate career after graduating PENN as an officer in the United States Marine Corps. My thesis on the formation of the Association of Southwest Asian Nations (ASEAN) enabled to understand the complexities of this region when I was deployed there. During my service, I lived in Japan, and was deployed to Thailand and was also deployed off the coast of Indonesia during the civil uprisings in 1999. Because of my coursework, I was able to confidently assist my chain-of-command in understanding these regions and their respective history. One of the highlights of my service was serving as an adjunct professor of U.S. History and teaching service members about U.S. foreign policy during WWII. After the military, I went to law school, and am currently a commercial litigator at a large national law firm. I can truly point to the IR program as developing my ability to critically analyze problems and develop alternatives for my clients. The multi-dimensional nature of the IR program exposed me to several different disciplines, thus enabling me to see the "big picture." The IR program honed my research and writing skills and has made into a successful litigator.
John Mueller, Class of 1996
From Penn I went to Georgetown University Law Center, after briefly considering (and deciding against) taking the foreign service exam.Upon graduation I spent 10 years combined at Weil Gotshal & Manges and
Hutchins Wheeler & Dittmar, practicing corporate law with a focus on mergers & acquisitions, venture capital, securities and private equity. Although I wouldn't have called myself an international lawyer then, much of my time as a business lawyer was spent (a) representing US private equity funds in their acquisitions of foreign targets or US targets with international businesses, and (b) representing entrepreneurs, many of them Latin American, starting their own international businesses and raising capital from US investors.
The economics courses that were required as part of the IR major proved to be instrumental in steering me towards my ultimate career path.Having this background gave me a basic understanding of business relationships and terms (which I wouldn't have otherwise had) and the confidence to study corporate law, transactional practice and tax at Georgetown.
In 2006, I became in house counsel for a large family office. The office manages the trust funds of, and provides financial, business and legal services to, one notable family and their companies, private equity
funds and non-profit entities. As the family members live all over the world, I am now more of an international lawyer than ever. Traveling mostly to London and working on a range of matters in South Africa, Germany and throughout the UK have become regular occurrences in my work. In my spare time, I like to travel with my family to Peru, Chile, Mexico and any other part of Latin America that we can get to!
If you have any questions, please do feel free to write me at pmoniquebyrne@gmail.com.
Monique Byrne, Class of 1993
I am a partner at a law firm in Seattle, where I practice in the areas of media law, intellectual property and civil litigation. Before attending law school, I spent five years as a journalist for newspapers in Boston and Seattle. My work has not involved much that is "international" in nature. But the skills I learned through the I.R.course of study - the ability to think broadly and strategically, to write with clarity, and to understand the world from a variety of perspectives - are skills I have used at every stage of my career.
Eric M. Stahl, Class of 1988
I'm a 1983 penn grad, with majors in IR and history, and a minor in economics. I went to law school (nyu, 1986) after Penn, and have been practicing ever since law school graduation, at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, in Los Angeles.
I am one of the co-heads of the real estate practice. My IR background at penn has served me in a number of ways, professionally and personally. Professionally, I do a substantial amount of international work---representing U.S. investors abroad, and foreign investors in their U.S. investments---and the perspective that I gained as an IR major, especially with a concentration on international economics, has served me well. Personally, one of my great interests in life---really my favorite hobby---is diplomacy and foreign policy, and I spend many hours every month sitting with friends, clients and other discussing these matters. I've found that my experiences at penn have prepared me very well for those conversations.
Jesse Sharff, Class of 1983
I did my masters and doctorate in IR at Penn after I completed law school at Cornell. I subsequently entered university teaching and have focused on international trade law. While I remain primarily a lawyer I write and teach on broader issues of trade and politics. I find that law schools even today do not really incorporate IR material into their programs. The world has become multidisciplinary and global. IR is the perfect field to enhance your professional career. Check my website at http://www.InternationalTradeRelations.com/ and for my recent book: Stuart Malawer, WTO Law, Litigation & Policy: Sourcebook of Internet Material (Hein 2007) . Be glad to address your students any time.
Stuart Malawer, J.D., Ph.D.
Upon completing my graduate (master's) program at Penn, I decided to go directly to law school, and graduated three years later from the University of Wisconsin Law School. I have since practiced law with the Wisconsin State Public Defender. While I did not go on to practice international law, I have taught courses at various undergraduate programs related to international law. For example, I teach comparative criminal justice at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. I was given this appointment because of the combination J.D. and M.A. in IR. When I complete my current career, I plan to practice immigration law and involve myself in some social law and justice work for political refugees. I would recommend that IR students intensely pursue a foreign language, and that it be a focus of the IR program at Penn. We all know that Spanish is a particularly relevant language in our country today, and I would emphasize its usefulness in IR. Thank your for seeking this kind of information from IR alumni. I know it will prove useful to Penn, its students, faculty, and prospective students.
Nicholas G. Bokas, M.A.,1977 (I think!)
I was an IR major, Class of '71, specializing in East Asian Affairs. For the past 25 years, I have been an international attorney working on a wide variety of business transactions and projects around the world. My experience at Penn was very special and certainly gave me the education and training that I needed to become successful in my chosen profession.
The IR major combined economics, history and political science and gave us the opportunity to choose a specific geographic region as a concentration. Back in my undergraduate days, the Soviet Union was perceived as the greatest rival to the US and, hence, many IR majors chose it (or, more generally, Eastern Europe) as their area of concentration. Being contrarian by nature (and an ROTC Scholarship student staring at Viet Nam!), I chose East Asian Affairs as the focus of my major studies, complementing the requisite academic disciplines with Chinese language training and Asian cultural and religious studies.
I continued my language training during my graduate studies at Columbia University and, soon after completing law school, began working as in-house counsel for multinational corporations, as I saw this to be the best path to gain first hand experience in foreign countries. I have been practicing international law now for over 25 years and it would be easier to name the countries that I haven't been to. Of course, Asia has turned out to be perhaps the most dynamic region and will likely continue to rise in prominence across a broad band of global markets.
Every time that US companies have any kind of contact with a foreign party, there are always contracts and related agreements that need to be drafted and negotiated. My knowledge and experience working in foreign countries and wide foreign cultures and languages has served me well as both a legal and commercial advisor to a broad range of US, European and Asian corporations. I have also been a guest speaker at several international conferences.
It all began at Penn. The IR major to me is a most valuable educational experience and provides anyone with the initiative to gain a solid understanding of different lands, people and cultures. The qualities of instruction provided at Penn made that educational experience the best it could be.
Jim Doody, Class of 1971
After graduating from the College in 1956, with a major in International Relations and with my local draft board breathing down my neck, I applied for, and was granted admission, to the Navy Officer Candidate School (OCS) in Newport, Rhode Island. After graduating and attending several more Navy schools, I was assigned to a patrol squadron and spent the next three years flying early warning patrols over the Atlantic Ocean. I also served as an Assistant Legal Officer for my squadron and attended the Naval Justice School in Newport.
Upon separation from active duty, in 1960, I returned to Penn where I attended the Law School. After graduating in 1963, I joined my present law firm, Hodgson Russ LLP, in its Buffalo, New York office. For the past 44 years I have practiced corporate and banking law with my firm in its Buffalo and Albany, New York, Boca Raton, Florida and Toronto, Ontario offices. As part of that practice I have assisted clients with the importing and exporting of goods and have been admitted to practice before the U.S. Court of International Trade.
In my spare time I have traveled widely in Europe, South America, Africa and Asia. I have also actively participated in a number of charitable, governmental and political organizations and am presently helping establish a Canadian chapter of Lawyers Without Borders, a not-for-profit corporation headquartered in Connecticut that provides legal services globally to projects and initiatives that promote universal access to justice and that advance the rule of law. Finally, I am now attending night classes, trying to learn German.
There is no doubt that my education at Penn, and especially my focus there on international political and social issues, gave me a broad perspective that has been applied to many of my ventures during the last 50 years. I hope this gives some little help to Penn's IR majors.
Anthony L. Dutton, Class of 1956
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Maintained by: Tomoharu Nishino Last Modified: November, 2007 |