From Chicago to the World: 25 Years of the Northwest Pritzker International Law Team Project

This past spring break, Yona Isaacs (JD 24) was one of 21 students who traveled to Bosnia as part of this year's International Team Project (ITP). There, they interviewed local lawyers and NGO partners about local legal rights for minority groups, while participating in local history, hiking to waterfalls, and sampling delicious local foods such as burek (meat/potato pastry inside) and evapi (beef kebab) . The trip was the culmination of a semester of work during which students researched and created presentations to prepare, adapting their curriculum.

This year's ITP trips to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ghana, Ireland and Panama marked the programs 25^th the anniversary. Founded in 1999 by Lisa Huestis, a former clinical associate professor at the Law School, ITP has sent more than a thousand Pritzker students to every continent (except Antarctica) to prepare them for the worldwide legal marketplace. The International Team Project is a comparative law course designed by students in collaboration with a faculty advisor, where students learn about the role of United States law, legal institutions, and political, economic, and cultural systems in comparison to a foreign country. .

One of the distinguishing features of the ITP is that semesters are organized by students, culminating in synthesizing their field findings into a publishable paper. It's an opportunity for students to, along with a faculty advisor, really develop a course and make it their own, says Jesse Bowman, ITP director. While faculty members evaluate work and advise as needed, they defer to students who assemble travel plans and curricula in the countries they study and visit. Seeing our three 3L team leaders and their JD, LLM, and MSL classmates take ownership of creating their unique course was inspiring, says Joshua Alter, Dean of International Programs.

The program has been rebuilt at full steam after being halted due to COVID restrictions. In 2023, the law school appointed Joshua Alter as Dean of International Programs to help guide ITP into a post-pandemic future. One of his goals is to strategize with Northwestern partners and alumni to connect with other international institutions and governments in the future to help identify legal issues for students to study.

Daniel Gandert, clinical associate professor of law at the Center for Negotiation, Mediation and Restorative Justice, traveled to Australia as part of the ITP course during his second year of law school, traveled to Greece the following year as a student team leader of ITP. and served as faculty advisor for ITP Bosnia and Herzegovina last year. ITP offers a unique type of travel where you can meet people in places in another country that you wouldn't be able to in your own country, he says.

As part of this year's group prepared to travel and study in Ireland, the Vice Consul of the Consulate General of Ireland visited the class to talk to them about their questions on Irish laws covering data privacy, international taxation, justice reproductive health, digital banking, freedom of speech, alcohol regulation and income inequality. He came prepared with a binder full of notes on each of the topics, says Alter. Students asked questions and then, at his invitation, offered to follow up later via email. He made the presentations to create an unforgettable trip for us to visit the Bar of Ireland, says Alter. This was phenomenal for us because we were able to talk to lawyers about the subjects our students were studying and they were able to have real conversations that reinforced the research our students were doing. He says the students zigzagged around Dublin to meet the interviewees. It was a really cool way for me to watch the students balance work, interviewing and travel in a condensed one-week program.

Student-led

Isaacs says this kind of customizable experience is what led him to apply to the Pritzker. This was a good example of that collaboration and students bringing their knowledge, expertise and interest to the classroom and being able to direct what they want to do and how they want to do it. This is a skill that future lawyers will need to rely on. It teaches you how to collaborate with other people, which I think is a huge asset when you're working as a lawyer because most of the documents you draft, you'll draft with other people, says Elyse Voyen (JD 20), who traveled to Morocco with ITP when she was a law student.

These skills can be applied to any legal career, even if it is not related to international law. Voyen says that collaborating with her classmates to create their ITP experience in Morocco foreshadowed her current job as an assistant regional advisor at the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Working with a group that organizes a program and makes decisions is like a blank slate. You have to work with people in order to create the project you want. In my current job, I can collaborate with many different people, using the same skills strengthened during ITP.

Frances Guerrero (JD 18), who will begin a new position as Corporate Counsel at the Hyatt Corporation in July, says traveling with ITP to Iceland in 2017 as well as Cambodia and Vietnam in 2018 exposed her to more international issues. and different ways of thinking. It was helpful in terms of putting my knowledge, curiosity and research to work versus just typing up an outline and submitting it. There were actually tangible results, real people I could talk to and get their perspective on the work I was doing.

According to Alter, these global experiences and perspectives are important for today's lawyers. If we're training these students to be future lawyers who understand global complexities, it's a great opportunity to experience these other cultures and meet people with different perspectives. He noted that each of his JD students is planning to work at large multinational law firms after graduation or during their 2L summer. For them to see the global connections of legal practice, including the law firms they will work for after graduation, has been really helpful.

A deep web

Sometimes, the different perspectives come from the ITP cohorts themselves: Alter says 15 JD students (including one in the two-year program), six LLM students and one MSL student were in his Ireland cohort. The most interesting thing for me was seeing students across degree programs who had never met so quickly become a tight-knit community. I hope they will remain lifelong friends after this course and shared experience.

Years after her ITP experience, Guerrero was making plans to travel to Africa with a friend who used to lead ITP trips. She says ITP stands out as an informative and fun experience not always common in law schools. “I'm a first-generation college and law student and I've never gotten to study abroad. For many, sometimes the ITP was their first time traveling internationally. It was great that there was a program for them to do it in a way that they could go to the group and feel safe, encouraged. In the coming years, Alter and Bowman want to further increase potential students' awareness of ITP and deepen its network so that current ITP students can benefit from alumni engagement. Alter says some of this year's students researched beer and alcohol restrictions and regulations in Ireland versus the U.S. A high-profile student who works from home at a major beer company was the first person I thought of contacting when mentioned their topic. . Especially because he also went to ITP when he was a JD student! Alter added that at a recent event, admitted students spoke to second-year students who had studied media rights, freedom of speech and defamation in Ireland. The incoming 1Ls were able to hear from impressive 2L students whose overall theme was, We are focused on our academics and extracurricular activities as 2Ls here in Chicago, but we wanted an international experience as part of our three years at Pritzker. The ITP is, in my opinion, the perfect vehicle for many students at Pritzker to engage in globalized legal education and to see the increasingly globalized practice of law.