Director of International Tax Services at PricewaterhouseCooopers Miami office
How to make it to the top at Big Four?
Guillaume was tired of living Paris when he left his in-house job for a French oil and gas company. He always imagined himself working and practicing law in a language other than French, his native tongue.
Today he lives in Miami and directs the International Tax Services at PwC. What is like to work in a fast-paced multilingual dynamic place like PwC, where the entire floor was staffed with people from around the world? How to get an internship at the Big Four? How to turn your internship into a job offer?
Alina Solodchikova, Tax Controversy Leader and Principal Attorney at RSM
How to make it as an internationally trained tax attorney?
When Alina moved to New York with her newly minted LLM as a Russia-trained lawyer, someone told her that there was little chance that she would make partner because of her exotic last name. Boy, doesn’t she prove the naysayer wrong? After having worked at the IRS’s Office of Chief Counsel for nearly six years, today she’s the tax controversy practice leader and the principal attorney at RSM, the fifth largest accounting firm in the U.S.
How did she make it to the top at one of the biggest accounting firms in the U.S.? How did she find her first job through a networking event? What activities and events are the most helpful during her LLM year to develop her career?
How did he become the first ever international intern turned shareholder at a firm founded in 1886?
When Yao was applying for internships during law school, most firms had stopped accepting new applications. He decided to cold show up at the doorsteps of the top 20 firms in Cleveland, Ohio, where he was studying. He went to the first firm on his list. The receptionist welcomed him, offered him coffee and informed him that the hiring partner was not in the office that day. He left his cover letter and resume. He thought it was a dead end.
As he was waiting for the elevator, he saw another gentleman was waiting as well. He looked at his watch, it was 3:30. He thought that this guy must not be a lawyer. No lawyer leaves work at 3:30. They struck up a conversation. As it turned out the guy was indeed an (estate planning) lawyer who has been with the firm for 25 years. He introduced Yao to the hiring partner a week later. During the subsequent interview, Yao wasn’t begging the firm for a job, but rather trying to figure out: why were his peers with stellar grades not being hired?
This is a story with a happy ending. Yao became the first intern the firm ever hired in its 137-year history. At the end of his internship, he received a job offer, and eventually, he made history once again by becoming the first shareholder with an international background at the firm.
How did he manage to persuade the hiring partner to offer him the internship?
How did he turn the internship into a permanent position?
Why indeed didn’t his peers with stellar grades secure jobs like he did?
Prof. Weger with Georgetown Law alumni in front of Deoksugung Palace
Summer 2023 was packed with legal English endeavors! A highlight was meeting up with LL.M. and J.D. alumni during a visit to South Korea, generously hosted by Law Center alumnus, Chairman Seung-Hoon Lee .
The opportunity to connect with our multilingual community in a global setting affirms the legacy of the Georgetown experience. I was delighted to share insights about our Two-Year LL.M. program with these colleagues and welcome two of our incoming students.
Back in the U.S., I’ve been excitedly working on the release of the next issue of AL Forum, the Applied Linguistic Newsletter for TESOL, a publication I co-edit with Dr. Natalia Dolgova. This issue will explore the impacts of artificial intelligence (AI), such as the emergent use of ChatGPT, on educational practices; it includes articles from Georgetown colleagues Professor Stephen Horowitz and Technology Specialist Ellery Boatright.
Research also found a way into the summer! Professor Julie Lake and I are collaborating on upcoming conference presentations and publications that focus on integrating asset-based pedagogical practices into Legal English education. As this busy summer wraps up, I look forward to an even busier school year!
Professor Lake had a wonderful summer traveling around the U.S. with her husband and daughter. She spent a week at Cape May, NJ at the beach, a week in Chapel Hill, NC, and a week in Philadelphia, PA.
During her summer she made progress on her personal “language-based” summer project to learn Spanish. Language learning is a lifetime journey!
Professor Lake also spent time working with Professor Weger to revise the language-focused curriculum for Fundamentals of Legal Writing for the 2023-2024 academic year. In Fall 2023, incoming Two-Year students will learn how to use language-based strategies to craft a high-quality memo (i.e., a lawyer-to-lawyer document). In Spring 2024, incoming Two-Year students will learn about the scholarly writing genre and how to write a high-quality mini-scholarly legal research paper.
And finally, Professor Lake enjoyed researching productive ways to use ChatGPT as a learning tool for law and linguistic students.
Professor Dundon began his summer by presenting at the Sixth International Language & Law Conference at the University of Bialystok Faculty of Law in Bialystok, Poland in June (see prior post).
He then taught a summer class, Introduction to U.S. Contract Drafting and Interpretation at IE University Law School in Madrid, Spain, where he has taught for the past three summers.
In July, Professor Dundon presented a paper, When multilingual litigants encounter monolingual ideologies in U.S. judicial opinions, at the Twelfth Bonn Applied Linguistics Conference in Bonn, Germany; he’s been invited back to Bonn to appear as a discussant in a conference focused on legal discourse, taking place in September (more on that in a future post).
He also traveled in Morocco, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan with family, before returning to Georgetown to teach U.S. Legal Research, Analysis, and Writing as part of the LL.M. Summer Experience program.
Professor Dundon ended the summer with a presentation at Georgetown Law’s faculty summer research workshop, where he spoke about his paper “A shifting precipice of unsettled law?”: A survey of how U.S. courts treat expert testimony using forensic stylistics, which was published this month in the International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law.
Prof. Yi Song takes a selfie with Prof. Michael Cedrone and their Georgetown Summer Experience “Foundations for American Law” class.
1. Summer Teaching
Professor Yi Song taught two courses during the Summer Experience – “Foundations for American Law” (co-teaching with Professor Michael Cedrone) and her summer stable, “U.S. Legal Research, Analysis and Writing.”
She’s especially proud of being responsible for the idea of the group assignment for the Foundations class.
In July 2023, 102 international lawyers from around the world walked into McDonough 203 as strangers.
They were asked to form 10 groups to present before class “What I have learned from the Foundations so far.”
In the subsequent 10 days, we saw history reenacted as Marbury v. Madison came alive.
Like most historic events, it all began with a fateful night at the bar.
The foundations of the American legal system were reimagined in the multiverse with the prompt “what if the Founding Fathers were_____?”
An uncanny Professor Cedrone Impersonator? A jury trial, where a top international model found herself in the midst of legal dramas? A tort case that occurred on the premises of Georgetown Law, inspired by the Office-style-behind-the-scene footage?
When Dean Treanor came in one morning for a surprise visit, Prof. Song regretted that she forgot to take a group class selfie with him. But the one she got with Professor Cedrone still came out pretty good.
Master of Laws Interviews Project has come to the classroom this summer. Season 2 is being recorded now. Stay tuned for the Fascinating journeys such as how a lawyer got hired and became the first shareholder with international background in a firm’s 137 year history; How a former star student from legal research and writing class successfully turned her externship into the international associate position at BigLaw. And more!
Prof. Michelle Ueland (standing, far left) with fellow presenters and faculty at Universidad Nacional in Costa Rica.
I was an invited keynote speaker for this conference in Costa Rica (at a branch campus of my MA alma mater, la Universidad Nacional) on August 17 & 18. I gave two presentations (#1 and #2 below) and the closing plenary (#3).
1. “Advancing Listening and Speaking Skills in English for Specific Purposes (ESP) Classrooms”
2. “In Your Voice and In Your Shoes: Experiencing Sanaz Toossi’s Pulitzer-prize-winning play “English”
3. “What’s all the chatter about? Writing educators’ pedagogical responses to generative artificial intelligence (AI) products like ChatGPT-3.5”
I presented at the Global Legal Skills Conference at Nottingham Law School at Nottingham Trent University, England (July 30-Aug 1, 2023). My presentation was titled “Addressing international law students’ pronunciation needs: Best-practices informed by linguistics research and pedagogy.”
Abstract
Although professors notice issues in their international students’ speech, they may not feel equipped to address them. This presentation will cover four research-based, best practices for teaching second language (L2) pronunciation: orienting towards intelligibility, creating task-based lessons, increasing talk-time, and giving feedback.
Many L2 speakers express a desire to “eliminate their accents”, however, accents carry valuable information of our diverse identities and experiences. Teachers can instead help students reorient towards the crucial feature of communication called intelligibility, which asks if the listener received the message the speaker intended to convey. Oral skills can then be addressed through task-based teaching, which focuses on tasks students face (e.g., oral case briefs, negotiations) and guides them through the language necessary to complete them. Third, increasing the amount of productive (versus receptive) interactions in the target language will help students to see progress more rapidly. One suggestion is assigning a video reflection after observing courtroom proceedings. Finally, explicit pronunciation feedback can be a salient tool for progress. Feedback can focus on unintelligible speech, articulation of a sound, and spoken grammar.
These four approaches can be applied in any classroom around the world. Digital access to all teaching materials will be provided.
Shuguftah Quddoos, the first Asian woman to serve as the Sheriff of Nottingham
Also,….
A fun tidbit about the city was that it is the birth place of the Robin Hood lore, and there is actually a real Sheriff of Nottingham position (from what I learned, it’s apparently similar to Mayor).
The current Sheriff is the first Asian woman to hold the position, and we learned from her that all the city buses and trams are electric vehicles too.
GLS was a great small conference, and next year it will be in Bari, Italy!
Georgetown Legal English professors John Dundon and Stephen Horowitz together with National Chengchi University law professor Anna Yan
*Collaborated with a USAID Ukrainian representative to establish online legal English training programs for Ukrainian law faculty starting in Fall 2023. The effort has involved identifying interested US legal English instructors and matching their areas of expertise with the interests of Ukrainian law faculty.
*Set up assessments (pro bono) for female judges from Afghanistan preparing to enter LLM programs at US law schools. The project, which involved collaboration with Prof. Daniel Edelson (Seton Hall/USLawEssentials.com) and Prof. Lindsey Kurtz (Penn State Law), was at the request of an ABA initiative working to mentor and support female Afghan judges.
*Taught a 4-week online Bar Exam Essay Writing for LLM Students course during May/June, in collaboration with Prof. Daniel Edelson. The mission (and experiment) was to make the course accessible to any LLM or non-native English speaking law student, regardless of ability to pay, and it worked well. A second section of the course had to be created to accommodate excessive demand.
*Wrote a soon-to-be published article abou for AL Forum, the Applied Linguistic Newsletter for TESOL, about using ChatGPT to create tax vocabulary practice activities.
*Invited to guest lecture (via Zoom) for a legal English course at Keio University in Tokyo, Japan during the fall 2023 semester.
*Had the opportunity to meet visiting scholar Professor Anna Yan, who teaches law at National Chengchi University in Taiwan and show her the new Legal English faculty offices in McDonough 477.
*Sadly was unable to attend the Global Legal Skills Conference in Nottingham, UK, July 30-Aug 1, which some attendees have shared was really fantastic. But hoping to attend the 2024 GLS Conference in Barri, Italy.
*Fortunate to have had a family vacation in July in a small town (Puerto Morelos) on the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, which was a very positive linguistic experience and first time out of the US for my children.
Master of Laws Interviews Season 1 Finale – Catherine X. Pan-Giordano!
Dorsey & Whitney Partner, Corporate Group Head NY office, Chair of the U.S.-China Practice, Member of the Management Committee
Asian, female, multilingual and partner, Catherine X. Pan-Giordano, Esq. is the epitome of success that Ingrid from the hit Netflix series Partner Track aspires to achieve.
Catherine is featured in the New York Times Magazine as one of Top Women Attorneys in New York, hailed as a Rising Star. She was honored as one of the Top Women in Dealmaking by The Deal in 2023; recognized as a Foreign Expert (China) by Chambers Global for four consecutive years and in Lawyers of Color’s Power List.
Growing up in China, Catherine loved ancient Chinese detective stories and crime fiction. She has studied law in China, Sweden and the U.S. She has been the top of her class throughout her school years, except at law school in the U.S., where she admittedly learned the most. When she started her career in the U.S. as a first-year associate, she made an unusual request with the firm that hired her. What was her ask? How did she make partner in BigLaw and earn one of the seven seats at the firm’s Management Committee? What was the most important factor contributing to her success?
Ophelia Kemigisha, a human rights lawyer from Uganda is known for her activist work in feminism and LGBTQ rights. Like every law student, she spends most of her time reading cases. What surprises her about the reading and writing in law school is that cases you read are so convoluted yet you are expected to write something so simple and concise. What is her biggest takeaway about reading and writing in law school?
Haohan Wang applied to 25 externship positions and received 15 interview invites and 3 offers.
Haohan Wang received his first law degree in the UK. He studied and worked in Beijing, London and Brussels. What are the top networking tips that landed him an externship position at BigLaw?
A UK-trained Lawyer from China and Legal Extern at Paul Hastings
How did he land an externship at BigLaw?
Haohan applied to 25 externship positions and received 15 interview invites and 3 offers.
Haohan Wang received his first law degree in the UK. He studied and worked in Beijing, London and Brussels. What are the top networking tips that landed him an externship position at BigLaw?
How did he find the inside information about what specific skillsets certain firms are looking for?
How did he navigate the differences in business cultures, while working for White & Case representing a state-owned enterprise in China?
What does it mean to “think like a lawyer” while ordering dinner?
How did a LinkedIn influencer secure his externship at BigLaw?
Pushkar Keshavmurthy, a LinkedIn influencer before he even set foot in law school, is the third-generation lawyer in his family. He’s dedicated to establish a career in international arbitration.
How did he jump start on building his professional network before he even set foot on the U.S. soil?
How did being a LinkedIn influencer help him land his externship at King & Spalding?
How did he demonstrate to his future employer that his previous experience add value to the firm?
Gabriela Rendon Staff Attorney at Gender Equality Law Center
How did a multilingual professional dancer find her calling in public interest law?
Gabriela Rendon, Esq. first came to the U.S. to pursue her career as a professional dancer with Martha Graham School in New York City. Fluent in English, Spanish and French, she studied law in Argentina and France. Eventually she found her calling in public interest law at Gender Equality Law Center.
How did she turn her post-graduate fellowship into a permanent position?
How did she find a career that enables her to do impactful and meaningful work?
Why is it important for lawyers to keep a creative outlet?
How did Sofia Vergara inspire her to embrace who she is as an international lawyer?
Eve Perez Torres moved to the U.S. from Colombia and started law school at the age of 34. She studied part time while raising a child. Today she is the Senior Attorney at FedEx working on legal and regulatory matters with counsels from around the world.
How did she land your first law job in the U.S.?
How did Sofia Vergara inspire her to embrace who she is as a lawyer?
What is it like to work in the in-house legal department for a multinational corporation?
