TILJ Times

January 2010

In this issue:

1. Alumnus Profile
2. Chancellors
3. Clerkships
4. Member Spotlight
5. Subscriptions
6. Special Feature: TILJ in Intramural Sports

Alumnus Profile: Michael Fadus

Michael Fadus ’88 discovered his interest in international studies early. He graduated from Boston University with a bachelor’s degree in German and went on to pursue a master’s degree in German from the University of Texas. After graduation, he worked as a secretary for a small economic and political research company in Austin whose president was a lawyer. It was the first time he had met a lawyer who did something other than work in a law firm. He admired the successful, fast-moving business and was fascinated by the way the president employed legal discipline to craft key parts of his work product. When Michael decided to pursue a law degree at UT, the president of the company supported his decision. He gave him a Black’s Law Dictionary, which he has kept ever since.

While in law school, many of Michael’s elective courses focused on international law, and after graduation he continued to develop his interest in the international arena by pursuing international educational opportunities. Michael went to Germany on a Fulbright scholarship. He also received a DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) scholarship for non-German attorneys to study German Law and a President’s scholarship which allowed him to get his MBA from the Thunderbird School of Global Management.

His first job after law school was with a law firm in California. His interview with this firm was his last interview and came after weeks of receiving rejection letters from other firms. Michael remembers being frustrated and not in a pleasant mood for his interview. He had carefully crafted his CV to highlight his German language skills, his international law courses, his soon-to-be published student note on German law, and his position as an associate editor of the Texas International Law Journal. He remembers the hiring partner’s first question was, “What are your interests?” Michael’s response: “I’m sorry, had you taken the same amount of time to read my CV as I did in putting it in an envelope and sending it to you, you would already know what my interests are.” The hiring partner was stunned but continued the interview nonetheless. The following day, Michael was offered the position. Over the phone, the hiring partner told him, "It’s nice to see someone with a spine; it’s necessary in our line of business.” While he got the job, Michael does not recommend that interviewing approach to anyone.

Michael currently works as a Regional Compliance Director for Merck. He is based at the company’s headquarters in Lucerne, Switzerland and manages a team of officers who handle the company’s compliance program in twenty-five countries in Western, Central, and Eastern Europe. He enjoys the cultural aspects of business behavior (seeing how people arrive at decisions, prioritize their time, establish a hierarchy and so forth). Michael maintains that “it is a huge challenge to make an international company's somewhat monolithic policies and procedures add immediate and lasting value to our employees from Spain to Kazakhstan, from Finland to Slovenia, and many points in between.” Traveling to some of these “far-flung” places for work has given him new perspectives on life. In addition, Michael believes that his greatest professional achievement was “figuring out how to put together a mixed educational background (German, law, business administration) and a mixed career path (law, HR, communications, compliance) into a unique skill set that allows a flexible and rewarding career path” in a dynamic international company.

Michael’s advice for current law students is to be good to each other and stay in touch. He emphasizes that class rank does not define you, but “being a decent human being does.” He also encourages students to “think outside the border of Texas . . . [T]he world’s a big place, and saying you are from Texas still intrigues people and brings a smile to their faces—leverage that!”

Michael has lived in Switzerland for the past eight years. On top of his professional accomplishments, he has been with his partner for the past seven years and in a civil union for the past two. He enjoys scuba diving and is an accomplished baker.

Michael sums it up by saying, “Life is good.”

Member Spotlight: 2009-10 Rapoport Center Human Rights Scholars

Matthew Dunlap received his B.A. in Political Science from the University of Richmond in 2003. He served in the Peace Corps as a Youth Development volunteer in Morocco, where he taught English courses and encouraged youth to become community stakeholders. This past summer he worked on civil and criminal legal issues while clerking with the U.S. Attorney's Office in Maryland.

Maka Hutson received her B.A. in Linguistics from Moscow State Linguistic University in Moscow, Russia. She continued her education at the University of Texas at Austin and received a Master's degree in Linguistics with a concentration in Sociolinguistics. While in graduate school, she researched the issue of linguistic rights as human rights and conducted a study of the treatment of the Russian-speaking population in the post-Soviet republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. She later worked for seven years at the International Office at UT Austin as a program coordinator assisting international students and faculty with their immigration and tax matters. This past summer, Maka was also awarded the George M. Fleming Public Interest Summer Fellowship. She worked at Texas Appleseed helping conduct a study of the immigration court system's treatment of detainees with mental illness and access to mental health services for immigrant detainees in Texas.

Special Feature: TILJ Intramurals

The TILJ intramural football team competed this fall in an all-journal division led by 2L captain John Hernandez, highlighted by a 25-0 win over the Texas Law Review team. Special thanks to regular participants Angelica Austin, Lindsey Hughes, Tosha Mayo, James Lindsey, Adam Fritcher, Phillip Lee, and John Hernandez.