Michigan Law
Two Michigan Law students were among a select group who recently participated in a week-long program at the University of Tokyo, where they immersed themselves in issues of international law.
The inaugural Winter School on Japanese Law hosted 55 students from 13 elite global institutions, including Peking University, the University of Melbourne, and KU Leuven. In addition to classes, the group of students visited the Supreme Court and the Big Law firm Nagashima Ohno & Tsunematsu.
“Not to be dramatic, but it really was quite life changing,” said 3L Emily Lovell. “I can’t believe it was just one week. It really felt like so much longer, which showed that one-week study abroad can be really impactful.”
Lovell and fellow 3L Michael Zhao were selected from 28 Michigan Law applicants to the program, or about 10 percent of the current 3L class.
The University of Tokyo program continues a long relationship between Michigan Law and the Japanese legal education system.
Case in point: The first two LLM degrees Michigan Law awarded were to Japanese students, in 1890. More Michigan Law alumni live in Japan than any other foreign country. One study abroad student, Spencer Bunting, is currently at Waseda University in Tokyo (a long-term institutional partner). And an annual faculty exchange exists with the University of Tokyo Law School.
The relationship with the University of Tokyo most likely had an impact as its law school chose international partners for the program, said Eric Christiansen, assistant dean for international affairs.
“When they started picking their international partners, I think we were the first U.S. institution they reached out to,” said Christiansen. “They said, ‘Your students are so impressive, and they’ve always been so interested in our topics and meeting our faculty.’”
Value in short-term international opportunities
Zhao and Lovell—whose trips were funded through the Law School’s Clara Belfield and Henry Bates Overseas Fellowship—are pursuing different types of legal careers, but the program offered valuable experiences to each of them.
Zhao, for example, took away a lot from the lectures on competition law, known as antitrust law in the United States.
“We were assigned to different scenarios, or hypotheticals, and were divided by the nations we are from,” he said. “And we shared how that kind of case would be solved in our own jurisdiction. I learned a lot from everyone and how their competition law is dealing with those kinds of issues.”
While he will work for the New York office of Herbert Smith Freehills following graduation, Zhao does not rule out working in Japan at some point in his career. So he appreciated the firsthand insights he gained during the program about the Japanese Big Law career field.
“I actually asked a lot of questions when we had the law firm visit,” he said. “And the panel was really open to answering any question about how Big Law in Japan operates and how they do their recruiting.”
For Lovell, the experience was deeply personal as well as professional.
She is one-quarter Japanese, and her grandmother was interned as a teenager during World War II.
She envisions a career in criminal law and public defense, working to ensure that people’s constitutional rights are upheld.
“I was interested in international comparative criminal law, but this made me even more interested in it,” she said, adding that she will take lessons learned to her clerkship with the Hon. Dana Sabraw in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California following graduation.
“For example, learning about Japan’s volunteer probation officer program was particularly impactful. There seemed to be more of an acknowledgement there that everyone was a part of the community and needed to be reintegrated back into the community. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forget that and will think more broadly and creatively about how we do criminal law in this country.”
Christiansen said that, like Zhao and Lovell, Michigan Law’s Center for International and Comparative Law (CICL) also has taken lessons from the University of Tokyo program. In reading through applications to the program, CICL learned that students are eager for short-term international learning opportunities.
“It’s really given us this insight into how our students feel about these opportunities and really motivated us to find new ways to meet that interest.”
