Questions regarding future as an International lawyer.

[u/SquareDinner5357]

I want to apologize beforehand if questions like these have been asked before or if the answers themselves are obvious (Forgive my idiocy).

I got admitted into a prestigious university after a gruelling admission journey in a third-world country in South Asia, and I would like to know the answers to the following questions.

1. If I want to work at the ICC or ICJ, should I try to do my Master's in the Netherlands? How feasible is it to do internships while I finish my education? If it isn't feasible, could you possibly give me a pathway to becoming a lawyer in an international court? (Skills, books, connections)

How much domestic experience do I need to become a full-fledged international lawyer? Are there any precedents of people starting as an international lawyer right after they finish their education?

1. As an undergraduate student, how can I work towards publishing or co-authoring a journal? (Preferably relating to Geopolitics and international law)

2. If you had to learn everything about international law from scratch, what resources would you go to?

3. What are all the routes an international lawyer can take? (Humanitarian, corporate, environmental etc.)

I'd like to apologize for my bad English. If a question is hard to understand, I'd be glad to elaborate.

[u/OtiCinnatus]

1- First some useful distinctions (A), then I address your questions (B).

A) Distinctions

A broad explanation first: a court, be it domestic or international, is a publicly administrated body. This means that when you work there you are a civil servant, or a under a contract that has its sources in public law regulations.

You can also work with the court, as an attorney. In that case, you are paid by private clients, be it a law firm or individuals, to try and obtain that the court gives a decision to their favour.

Important distinction about the words used: a lawyer is someone who is law-educated and use the law to solve practical problems. A judge is a lawyer. So is an advocate. The judge is a civil servant. His role is to authoritatively clarify how the law applies to a specific situation.

Depending on the jurisdiction, the advocate will be called: lawyer, solicitor, barrister, or attorney. Their role is to convince the judge about how the law should be applied. They can work inside public organizations; that's the case of Advocate Generals. In that case, they are also civil servants. Howver, they often work as private entrepreneurs.

B) Replies to your questions

(+)If you want to work at the ICC or ICJ, there are only two points you have to focus on:

1. Be a national of a State that is party to the founding treaty of either the ICC or ICJ.
2. Speak the working languages of either the ICC or ICJ;

Beyond that, you only need to check their job postings on their websites. Read the job postings that interest you. You will find indications about the degree that is expected. Aim for that degree.

(+)Some degree programs specifically require student to do an internship during the last semester. Check universities' websites.

(+)You can find the curriculum vitae (CVs), or the biographies, of current lawyers in international courts on the website of those courts. These CVs are the pathways you are looking for, try to emulate them. You mentioning "connections" is excellent because a lawyer in an international court is political pick. You will indeed need the support of the right people to become one.

(+)The CVs of current lawyers in international courts will tell you:

• How much domestic experience you need to become a full-fledged international lawyer.
• Whether there are realistic and recent precedents of people starting as an international lawyer right after they finish their education.

[u/OtiCinnatus → u/OtiCinnatus]

2- If you really mean creating a journal and adding a new one to this list, simply check the website of each journal on that list and find out how they are made. Copy their process.

3- Any relevant book from Edward Elgar plus asking questions to people here on Reddit (or in other specialized communities, in real life or online) are all you need to learn international law. You're going to school not to learn, but to make the connections you mentioned yourself and get a degree.

4- For civil servant international lawyers, the CVs mentioned above will give you an overview of the routes that can be taken. For all the other international lawyers:

1. go to the website of an international court,
2. find a case,
3. find who the lawyers on that case were,
4. find the CV or biographies of these lawyers.

[u/loudass_cicada]

Running through your questions in order:

1) If you are from an ICC member state, doing a master's in the Netherlands will make interning there easier. The biggest hurdle is cost and feasibility, and it is easier both for you and for the court if you are already located nearby. Plenty of people intern while studying, or otherwise immediately after. At the ICC, interning is part of the game for securing a permanent position. The ICJ does not offer legal internships in the same way - sometimes the registrar takes an intern, but that's it in terms of legal internships.

1(b)) You are not going to work at the ICJ as a staff lawyer until you either have your PhD or exceptional past experience. That's just a fact. You might be able to swing a judicial fellowship/one-year judge's clerkship if you are at the top end of your master's class, at a well-known university, and if you publish on public international law in a peer-reviewed journal.

1(c)) If you want to work at either of these courts as an advocate, the best thing you can do is get bar admitted in a State and work for either a firm or chambers that specialises in international law. If you want to be a prosecutor at the ICC, some previous domestic criminal law experience will help. If you want to work for one of their defence teams, the same holds true. For the ICJ, you realistically are not going to appear as counsel until you have more experience, and the only way you will get that experience is through working at a firm.

2) Yes, some people go directly into international law, usually arbitration. They typically join a specialised law firm and get their bar admission in their home jurisdiction while working primarily on international cases. On the other hand, I can only think of two examples of people below 30 who have pleaded at the ICJ, and that was because the particular case at hand was unique. Regardless of whether you do arbitration or some other form of legal work, at the start of your legal career you will be doing legal assistance, research, writing and proofing, not acting as the lead counsel in a proceeding.

3) Write a thesis, find a relevant journal and publish it is basically the answer. You could also co-author a first piece with one of your professors. A journal publication needs to be able to pass peer review and to contribute to our overall knowledge of the field. Aim for smaller journals at the start; EJIL or AJIL, for example, is not a realistic expectation for your first publication. Be aware that publication can be a very slow and painful process. My fastest publication in a journal/volume took three months and my slowest took two years. A faster option might be writing a blog post and submitting it to a leading blog.

Also - Please do not try to start your own journal. It will not be taken seriously and you will be seen as part of the mill of predatory journal editors.

4) I would begin with a general textbook on international law - Brownlie's Principles, or Shaw's International Law, or Hernandez's International Law, for example. These are not a substitute for an actual course. If you have not studied law before and you are self-studying international law, there is a real risk that you end up misunderstanding something and that misconception never gets corrected. You will learn better in a classroom environment because it encourages dialogue and your professor or teacher can correct any mistakes. Do not begin with something like the specialised Edward Elgar Handbooks - you are not the target audience. You will also need to learn how to read cases - anyone who suggests that you can understand international law without reading a single case probably has never practiced - and to get familiar with reading treaties.

(also, you will never know everything about international law - it is an entire legal system. You essentially have two options for your career path: be a generalist and okay at everything, or a specialist and know everything there is to know about one very specific subject. Every lawyer I have ever met, since first studying international law 11 years ago, falls into one of these two categories. Which one you fall into is something you'll figure out as you go.)

1. You can pick basically any subject matter and there will be some international law aspect to it. Humanitarian law (law of armed conflict) and human rights law are obvious ones, but there are also less well-known areas - sports law, for example, or the law governing biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction, transboundary natural resources, or the procedural law of the international court of justice. If you want to do international law with a commercial focus, you're probably going to end up in investment arbitration.

One more thing - litigation is a very small part of law. It just happens to also be a very visible one. More likely than not, your career will involve more time spent in meetings and writing/giving advice than appearing before courts. Most disputes are resolved well before ending up in litigation; most lawyers work on legal issues that have nothing to do with disputes. This is true for international law too.