It is the eve of the 2024 annual meeting of Legus, the international network of which we are the sole English member. We will be gathering in Aachen, Germany tomorrow with friends from the US, Asia and Europe as we do every year around this time.
We are privileged to be Legus’s sole English law firm and, as such, we have been working with two of our fellow European member firms to strengthen the ties between us. In October 2023 we announced the launch of a new Legus European Internship, allowing select Russell-Cooke associates to spend a week in a European member firm (they must apply in a competitive process), and for us to host associates from those firms in our offices.
As a pilot last year we were lucky to host Suzanne Elzinga from Koster Advocaten in Haarlem, The Netherlands. Her internship went so well that this year we hosted Daisy Greuter, also of Koster, and Bethany Buchanan of Blackadders in Scotland in our offices for a week in May. Simultaneously our own Katie O’Kelly (associate, family, Kingston) went to Blackadders and Satinder Johal (associate, corporate, Putney) went to Koster Advocaten.
The internship week is spent circulating around different teams and being exposed to as wide a variety of work as possible – it is not limited to the work type in which the associate specialises. There is plenty of socialising and time for some sightseeing at the end, too.
The purpose of these internships is to consolidate the relationships between our firms, expand awareness of where there are synergies between our practices and deepen our understanding of how lawyers work in other jurisdictions. Of course we are hoping that referral work will flow from these relationships but it is about more than that; it is a cultural and intellectual exchange for our firms and unique personal development opportunity for the associates concerned.
Over the next few weeks we will be publishing blogs from each intern to provide an insight into their experience and what they have learnt from it.
Legus International is a legal network with over 80 law firm members across the globe. In conjunction with Legus, Russell-Cooke announced the launch of a new Legus European Internship in October 2023, which has so far seen us host three international interns.