I want international law Forum

[stillwater]

Schools, as part of their international law programs, should offer a class, "the Art of the Coup d'etat." Probably would help their employment figures.

[rad lulz]

,

[hephaestus]

I'm currently doing a (gasp!) intl human rights law internship at the UN

lol you won't get a permanent position

Exactly. These internships or competitive, but attainable from most schools. However, they rarely if ever hire straight out of school. The few people I know who did these internships did big law or attainable PI instead. There's little hope in going back.

[WhatOurBodiesAreFor]

Working in a foreign office is not int'l law in any meaningful sense of the term. You aren't jetsetting around and you aren't doing anything substantially different from what you would be doing in the US. Jobs in foreign offices are attainable from a wide range of schools for the right type of applicant, but it's not really int'l law.

My point was that a lot of people do consider that to be int'l law, not whether it should be considered that or not. I think working at the Paris office, for instance, of a U.S.-based firm for an extended period of time would be a more than acceptable outcome for someone like OP who wants to do "international law".

It's dumb to call that doing int'l law though, in the same way that it would be dumb to call working in the SF office "doing California law." Calling working in Paris int'l law invariably outs someone as not knowing what they are talking about.

Dude, it doesn't matter if they don't know what they are talking about. (How could you expect them to know what they are talking about anyway? Most of them are 0Ls with no legal experience). I think when most people say they want int'l law, they just want their work to have an int'l angle. That totally includes working in Paris.

TLS, in dispelling the myth that UN/ICJ/(true int'l law job) are attainable, is doing what it should. These are virtually unattainable jobs unless you come from a top school.

My point to all of this is when people say the want international law, I think most people do not mean they only want a true int'l law job, they'd be cool with doing a wide variety of things, such as working at a Paris branch; working for a multi-national company where you are required to travel a lot; etc.

I say all of this because I myself am interested in int'l law. I'm going to try hard for a true int'l law job, but if I don't get it, I'll be more than happy settling down in a city abroad, for example. It doesn't matter if it's not a true int'l law job, it's int'l enough and I think most people who say they're interested in int'l law would agree.

[WhatOurBodiesAreFor]

I'm currently doing a (gasp!) intl human rights law internship at the UN

lol you won't get a permanent position

rad lulz browses on-topic threads so he can get props over on the "social networking" section.

Why can't you type out a decent response like ImNoScar?

[rad lulz]

Working in a foreign office is not int'l law in any meaningful sense of the term. You aren't jetsetting around and you aren't doing anything substantially different from what you would be doing in the US. Jobs in foreign offices are attainable from a wide range of schools for the right type of applicant, but it's not really int'l law.

My point was that a lot of people do consider that to be int'l law, not whether it should be considered that or not. I think working at the Paris office, for instance, of a U.S.-based firm for an extended period of time would be a more than acceptable outcome for someone like OP who wants to do "international law".

It's dumb to call that doing int'l law though, in the same way that it would be dumb to call working in the SF office "doing California law." Calling working in Paris int'l law invariably outs someone as not knowing what they are talking about.

Dude, it doesn't matter if they don't know what they are talking about. (How could you expect them to know what they are talking about anyway? Most of them are 0Ls with no legal experience). I think when most people say they want int'l law, they just want their work to have an int'l angle. That totally includes working in Paris.

TLS, in dispelling the myth that UN/ICJ/(true int'l law job) are attainable, is doing what it should. These are virtually unattainable jobs unless you come from a top school.

My point to all of this is when people say the want international law, I think most people do not mean they only want a true int'l law job, they'd be cool with doing a wide variety of things, such as working at a Paris branch; working for a multi-national company where you are required to travel a lot; etc.

I say all of this because I myself am interested in int'l law. I'm going to try hard for a true int'l law job, but if I don't get it, I'll be more than happy settling down in a city abroad, for example. It doesn't matter if it's not a true int'l law job, it's int'l enough and I think most people who say they're interested in int'l law would agree.

Just call a spade a spade.

If you want to work for an international NGO or do capital markets, those are basically polar opposite things

You don't want intl law

You just want to live abroad

[20141023]

.

[froglee]

I'm currently doing a (gasp!) intl human rights law internship at the UN and working for a foreign office of a large firm this summer and I'm pretty sure both of those positions would be considered (different types of) intl law (and I'm not at HYS)


(OP (and others): Feel free to PM me for more details)

Yea, but you will never be able to convert that UN internship position into a parmanent one. And guess what? That UN internship thing will worth nothing on your CV.

[CR2012]

Would the scenario of working biglaw for 4-5 years and then transferring to an international branch be attainable?

I currently live abroad and hope to be able to do this.

[applepiecrust]

I'm currently doing a (gasp!) intl human rights law internship at the UN

lol you won't get a permanent position

Not trying to. Therefore the SA position for the summer.
The (few) Americans that are here aren't necessarily all HY (S seems conspicuously absent) but most of them have years and years of experience and great backgrounds; others don't (sometimes not even a T14 pedigree) but still have focused interests and paths.

As for what even constitutes international law, if you just mean public international law, then yeah, that's pretty limited. If you think you will be writing and interpreting treaties then no, you almost certainly won't. However, if by international law you mean one of two things: (1) "international" law: using primarily municipal law but working for clients that have multinational interests (especially securities, M&A, project finance etc) (not sure what the intl arbitration and intl trade practices look like but I know they are existent but more limited than corporate) or (2) international "law": applying public international law but to policy or other non-legal ends, then there are a lot more positions.

[applepiecrust]

I'm currently doing a (gasp!) intl human rights law internship at the UN and working for a foreign office of a large firm this summer and I'm pretty sure both of those positions would be considered (different types of) intl law (and I'm not at HYS)


(OP (and others): Feel free to PM me for more details)

Yea, but you will never be able to convert that UN internship position into a parmanent one. And guess what? That UN internship thing will worth nothing on your CV.

Got no illusions of converting it into a permanent position (do those even exist anymore? It's an absurd bureaucracy, that one). My goal with that was to test out the system, see if I should be investing time and energy into pursuing a unicorn of a goal, and I decided it was not worth it. If the only goal I had with internships was for an individual internship to be worth anything on a CV, I probably wouldn't have done any of them.
That said, the UN seems to be obsessed with signaling (probably they are dealing with such a diversity of systems that they have to drive down to lowest common denominators), so networks, publishing and recognizable school names count for a lot.

[reasonable_man]

I fucking love internation law threads. Trolling is at its best. Flaming is usually 180. "Serious advice" is always "rock solid." Speculation is out of control. The two guys in the world that do international law always swing by to talk about how its a real thing - for realss. International Law threads are just the best threads. Period.

IBIMSA (In before I miss something Awesome).

[rad lulz]

International law is so sexy

Spent my weekend in Thailand

Reviewing docs in a warehouse for an FCPA case

[reasonable_man]

International law is so sexy

Spent my weekend in Thailand

Reviewing docs in a warehouse for an FCPA case

Got picked up by local PD - who were none to happy about my investigation of FCPA...