For Erin Kilmer ’18, this past summer was anything but ordinary. She spent the month of July in Vienna, Austria, where she worked at the firm Graf & Pitkowitz Rechtsanwälte GmbH after being selected for the New York State Bar Association (NYSBA) International Section and Albany Law School's Law Student International Internship Program.

Interning in the firm's banking and financing department, Kilmer assisted on a paper for the United Nations about the use of warehouse receipts and financing the transfer of goods under Austrian law. That paper is forthcoming next year in Oxford's Uniform Law Review. She was listed as a co-author and worked directly for Dr. Otto Wächter, the lead author of the article.

"The internship program itself was wonderful," Kilmer said. "I was there with five Viennese legal interns. At the end of the summer we all gave presentations about different aspects of Brexit and its effects in Britain and the European Union. My presentation was about how Brexit will affect financial services. I also worked on updating a chapter in International Securities Regulation about Austria, and I helped my colleagues with their English in a number of legal documents."  

Vienna was Kilmer's first choice of location, partly because of its cultural opportunities.

"Vienna is an amazing, multicultural city," she said. "It has such a long history. One thing that really struck me was how much you could still feel the effects of World War II. Austria has made an effort not to erase what happened. … I had the opportunity to visit one of the courthouses in Vienna while I was there. They had a beautiful monument to the individuals who were sentenced to death by the Austrian Third Reich government during the war."

"We also went on a tour of the Austrian Parliament Building and went to a traditional heuriger, a restaurant attached to a vineyard," she added.

Albany Law School and the NYSBA International Section recently announced the locations for the 2018 Law Student International Internship Program, and Vienna is again on the list. Other possible destinations are: Buenos Aires, Argentina; Mexico City, Mexico; Sao Paolo, Brazil; and Panama City, Panama. The four- to eight-week internships are available to current 2L and 3L students.

Interested students are encouraged to contact Professor Peter Halewood at phale@albanylaw.edu. For more information, click here.