Transnational Law Blog

Summer Internship Opportunities for 1L Student Abroad

When I arrived in Hong Kong in July last year for the Duke Summer Abroad Program at Hong Kong University, I was surprised to find that many Duke students had already finished a summer internship with law firms either in Japan, Korea or China prior to their arrival in Hong Kong. It turned out that the students were helped by their program director to land 4-6 weeks internship before our summer program. I thought to myself how nice it was to earn 6 law units as well as an internship abroad, all in one summer.  I wanted to do that too, but it was already late into the summer, and I was afraid that I would not be able to do it. What were my chances?

After a bit of networking, I got a few words of advice from the program director that it is easier to find a summer internship in either Japan or Korea than in Hong Kong and China at such a late moment, especially for a US student who does not know the local language. I followed his advice and, without any real hope, sent out my resume and cover letters to five Korean law firms in the very last week of our program in late July.  I didn’t think that I would be successful but told myself that I would apply anyway just so I wouldn’t regret not doing it.  To my surprise, I was offered an internship with a mid-size international law firm in Seoul, South Korea within just a few days! Sometimes it is rewarding to maintain a “just do it” attitude.

Many of you are probably working hard to search for a summer job at the moment.  I hope that some of you are considering working abroad, especially those of you who are interested in international law. I found it immensely enriching and eye-opening to live and work in a new place as well as to learn about the similarities and differences that exist between the United States and foreign countries. My last minute job search convinced me that there are more opportunities to intern abroad than one may think. For this reason, I thought I should share some tips and resources with you.

1. Prepare your resume and cover letters as early as you can and apply early. Hastings career center has a great database that will help you to locate alums working in your preferred region. You can contact them for advice and recommendation. Many alums will even help you find local jobs if they are available. It was this linkage that most of the Duke students found their summer internships with very prominent US law firms in Japan and China.

2. I used HG.org and Martindale to search for the firms by region and by practice areas. While doing your search, don’t limit yourself; apply to as many firms as you can. However, you should prioritize your options into region, country and area of practice ahead of time in case you receive a few different offers at once. Even in late July, I received two offers and was ready to negotiate for my best one. Strategize your game!

3. It is best to have a rough idea of the area of law that you are particularly interested in. While negotiating with my law firm, I was asked what field and region I wanted to work in. Later, the firm nicely arranged me to work with the chief attorney who was in charge of the firm’s South East Asian practice. The experience was beyond fruitful and instructive.

4. Be prepared to ask for any accommodation that you may need while being in a foreign country. Some law firms do have a specific program for summer associates, but most firms don’t, which means they may not be entirely familiar with your personal needs. I asked my firm to help me with finding accommodation that is close by the office. The company ended up offering me a small residence only 10 minutes by subway from the main office located in the center of Seoul’s financial district. Later on, they further paid for all utilities, transportation, lunch and even dinners whenever I stayed at work late. There were also a welcome lunch and departing dinner (with karaoke) at the end of my internship, but that was another story of building professional work relationship with your employer. I was told that some Korean and Japanese firms even pay stipends for your stay if they cannot offer you working salaries.

5.  Knowing local language is preferred but is not required. Although there is an obvious advantage to speaking the language, it is important to keep this in perspective. Before my internship, I had never been to South Korea and don’t know any Korean. Yet, I did not have any language problems during my internship. If you are in a similar situation, I suggest looking for law firms that have strong international practices, which will almost guarantee you some learning experience and professional interactions.

6. Be prepared, be patient and be open-minded when you are in a new country. Everything will sort itself out gradually. Did I say that you will have a blast? If you trust the journey, it will show you the land where your imagination often fails to reach.

Sail your boat, have fun and best of luck!

Thinking Through the Year of the Earth Ox

Harvard's political economist, Dani Rodrick, recently posted some new thoughts regarding 2009. In his entry named "Looking Forward To 2009", Rodrick detailed four major determinative tickets that may make the world better or worse in the upcoming year:

    1. Will the U.S. policy response be “bold” enough?
    2. Will Europe get its act together?
    3. Will China hold together?
    4. Will there be enough global economic cooperation?

Other than the first item, the other big three have been major and on going issues being discussed across disciplines in the past couple of years. Yet, during this historical and transitional period, they become ever apparently crucial.

Much of the deliberations in the past months revolved around whether the U.S. is heading toward a Second Great Depression, which may drastically increase the existing international economic, political and social instability. Fortunately, the concern is negated by most economists going from most unlikely to nil. Social scientists are hoping that for as much as we understand how the world functions today, much more than our grandparents did during the Great Depression, we will save ourselves from repeating history. My hunches are followed.

First of all, the Obama administration will response boldly to the current crisis; although, such responses are facing uncertainty as to whether the action  manages to gather enough supports from Americans and abroad as well as if the developed countries (most notably Western Europe and Asia) react consistent with the U.S. policy.

Secondly, the global financial crisis will not cure the division among European countries. In fact, it is appeared worsening, as the “European governments are observing one another with growing distrust,” especially when the European Union cannot continue to prove its necessary existence and leadership to its skeptical members.

As for global cooperation, I suspect that this transitional period will force an increase in global cooperation (can we afford not to?); although, there seemingly exists growing local and regional tensions. Why? I don't know, I just intuitively feel that it is the case. However, with the most recent world events, once may agree that such intuition has validity- Israel arm force attack on the Gaza strip, the India-Pakistani turmoil, reunion set back between North and South Korea. Over all, the Asia Pacific is probably the least unstable region at the moment, which may explain why it has been holding up relatively well during the global financial breakdown.

In regards to China , the Communist Party has now put aside its strategic sustainable development focus to concentrate on maintaining its growth rate. If China growth goes below 8% rate, it is arguable that social upheavals will arrive. Recently, a stimulus package has been announced to supplement job losses and exporting demand from the global market. Yet, the country has already seen a growing amount of social unrest mostly scatter around industrial zone where manufacturing jobs are being cut steadily. I have much hope that the Chinese government will be able to tame social uprising and minimize the impact of the current crisis. Here, the key solution is to create new jobs and stimulate domestic consumption to make up for the exporting decrease and to maintain growth rate. However, placing fiscal stimulus on performance of state owned enterprises (SOEs) as one of the party's major proposed strategies will create tremendous stress on sustainable development causing the issues such as degrading environment, resource shortage, social and regional polarization to explode further. China will face much more complicated setbacks once sustainable development topic comes around the next time, i.e. when the global crisis is resolved.

I am inclined to say that the current global financial meltdown certainly brings China closer to the inherent flaws of its “socialism with Chinese characteristic”, aka, a market system that is centrally planed and governed by one party. However, I don’t think the any political revision will come within the time span of the current financial crisis. Perhaps, not even within the next decade. The country has a huge amount of trade surplus, stable account balance and Asia Pacific has been holding onto the crisis relatively well in which, regional trade will not drastically reduced as it were the case for other regions. Speaking at the press conference during 07 National People’s Conference on March 07, Wen Jiabao asserts, “The Chinese economy still has some major problem, namely it is unstable, unbalanced, uncoordinated and unsustainable”. The communist party and its leaders know much about their internal weaknesses to curb them with external threats.

What the crisis will do is to reveal and to shepherd China closer to its systemic problems. Once the silver veil of a strong economic engine is taken away from the picture, the country’s social, political and sustainable shortcomings are all together unearthed and required to be addressed. I expect the dragon to once again make historians, economists and all of us startled on its next turn before the critical issue of a one party system stirs up the next civil unrest. There is much ahead awaiting this nation and us all.

At the moment, I am not only concern of the intensifying spread of the global crisis but also how we will come out of this after 2009. It is inevitable that this transitional period bears the golden key to our future fortune.

What Is More?

If you have not given up on following distressing news from the credit crisis, George Soros (a well respected Wall Street guru) recently published his analysis regarding our government's options on bailing out the banks. After watching Paulson helplessly aggravated the situation on his first round of spending the Tarp money, Soros sees that our leader has two options: (1) nationalizing the banks or (2) buying out the toxic assets and leave the banks to the market force.

Soros asserts that temporary nationalization is the best choice though extremely painful and costly, yet the Obama administration is being forced to choose the second option even with the knowledge of its long term and systemic flaw. I sometimes wonder how "bold" can our nation be to recover from the crisis? There are considerable risks associating with our daring policy choices, and at some point the opportunity cost must outweigh the benefits. On the other hand, in this picture, we have little options.

Unemployment is expecting to be in double digits soon. We are having job cuts across sectors and this will not slow down in foreseeable future. Assuming that Obama’s rescue package will hit hard and become as effective as he claimed (although some economists are having great doubt that it's substantial enough), it will still take some time for the market to response.

I'm nervous about the world. This unprecedented crisis is spreading fast. In the UK, after a series of bail out, last week the Royal Bank of Scotland is running out of reserves which will soon be nationalized by the British government. But then, can the UK hold on when "the median ratio of debt to equity in big UK banks is more than 30 to one"? There are suspects that the Sterling may eventually be in crisis. Italy is struggling for running out of foreign reserves, but isn’t it the same with the majority of Europe at the moment? Lots of blames are pointing toward the European Union for not taking sufficient measures and actions- but what more can be done? In the Asia Pacific, China and Korea both are  increasingly unstable. This is not to mention Thailand, North Korea and Sri Lanka to name a few. The political tension between the US and China over foreign exchange policy is ever this hostile, and I suspect it won't just stop here.

I am also concern about the long term impact of our budget deficit. We will pay back in pain to bridge the budget gap after the economy recovers. However, our government must continue to spend until the market resumes and runs relatively independent from government intervention- spending cannot be suspended at this moment.

I am even more apprehensive over the institutional framework that will be set up to adjust the market system by president Obama in order to potentially prevent similar credit crisis. On a broader scale, the IMF too is in great need for structural reform to responsively and constructively shape the future world economy. Policies always have much longer effects than fiscal adjustments. Hopefully, our nation and the world will not become more protectionistic than it already is. I fear that we will be disappointed on this matter. History often repeats itself.

And last, isn't the most worrisome issue that we haven't seen the bottom of this global calamity just yet. What's more?

Recommended Reading: Crashing Down Now!

Happy New Year, and I apologize for the prolonged hiatus. Various circumstances have prevented me from re-engaging the blogosphere earlier but such is life, and I will hopefully have more time now to blog. Nevertheless, during my hiatus, there was one blog I consistently read that has always been highly informative, fascinating, and accurate: Crashing Down Now! If you're not reading this blog, then I suggest you start. The blog's author has seen the writing on the wall for a long time now in regards to the current global economic situation and I'm posting his predictions for 2009:

(1) Major inflation. Sticker shock on everything from food to gas will repeat last year’s spring and summer pattern. The new fad scare of deflation will drift away as the US can’t get anyone to continue financing its debt and the Fed finally resorts to massive inflation to close the massive budgetary gaps. China will slowly stop buying debt so the inflation will be steady rather than in spikes. The government statistics on inflation, like unemployment, will under-report it by two or three times. The price of oil, silver, and gold will shoot up as they did last year, and in approximately the same time frames.

(2) Russia and Germany up. UK, US down. Though Russia is currently hurting from the low prices of oil, they still have a net surplus and savings; something the US hasn’t had for a long time (not to mention 1/8 of the world’s land mass and all the resources that go with it). Ukraine’s tiff with Russia over gas right now is likely to fracture Ukraine into two pieces, not harm Russia in the slightest. Russia might even gain territory. Germany is much more pragmatic and better-positioned to weather the storm, being one of the few rich nations that actually produces more than it consumes. Soon, Germany will de-facto control the EU and the euro like the US currently controls the UN. UK won’t shed the pound for the euro — not because the pound won’t fall, but because the rest of the EU won’t allow it. Riots and unrest in Germany and Russia won’t be nearly on the same scale as the US and the UK, as both are more homogenous societies and race relations will become a white-hot divisive issue during the new depression in multicultural societies. China will be a little bit of both. Riots by the have-nots, but no economic deterioration like the US and UK. China will mostly remain flat.

(3) Israel regrets its Palestine invasion. Israel’s attack dog, the US, is very ill and won’t be able to cover for Israel quite as well as before. The Muslim world will converge on Israel politically and will be supported to an extent greater than ever before due to worldwide souring of opinion towards the policies of the nation of Israel. High risk of expanded war in the region, with players such as Syria, Lebanon, and even Pakistan. Israel will have minor losses comparatively but will lose public sympathy (its most valuable asset) forever. No nuclear weapons will come into play, however. Israel’s economic status sours considerably. Iran will not play a large part, counter to most peoples’ expectations.

(4) Obama appears to be Bush with a different face. Same policies, same excuses, same results. Slight variation on the implementation. (Coke with the sweetness of Pepsi — it’s Coke II!) Different group of blind supporters, I suppose. Huge let-down for those with half a brain, no surprise for those with a complete brain. Expansion of military engagements in the Middle East, blind support of the Federal Reserve’s disastrous policies (rather, existence), more spying on citizens, increased police aggressiveness, bailouts, and spending money we don’t have. Big push to “regulate” and filter opinions on the internet based upon the excuses of fighting “hate speech and “extremism.” Congress will continue to be mostly ineffective except at endorsing the President’s policies.

(5) Huge housing bailout. Likely to include a massive delay of foreclosures, mandatory interest rates, changes in bankruptcy laws, tax laws, etcetera. Probably won’t occur until around tax time. Will help keep people in their homes and prevent a larger wave of rioting but will not cause prices to suddenly start rising. Established homeowners’ complaints will fall on deaf ears. Credit card bailout also a strong possibility. Corporate bailouts of every imagined (and unimagined) stripe are also likely. Bailouts of cities and states will be frequent and certain.

(6) Unrest followed by deployment of soldiers as “helping teams” (read police state) and all the bad press, riots, and anger that accompanies such. Increase in power of local gangs and hatred directed along racial lines. Economic division will not be seen along class lines as is more accurate, but along racial lines. 2009 will be the first year most people start to think about the US as several different regions, rather than a single nation. Possibility of bank “holidays,” government-assumed control of private retirement accounts, even a dollar default. Like the 30s, massive anger towards bankers, and wealthy people in general, and massive sympathy for any criminals who take on the establishment. Possible relaxation on the rules, or lax enforcement, of criminal marijuana laws. Marijuana becomes the new prohibition issue with its myriad motivations and repercussions. Huge increase on the regulation of firearms and acts of “terrorism.”