When Brady Jensen sat down last spring to plan his final year of law school, he knew he wanted a study abroad trip to be part of it.
“I knew that it was something I always wanted to do, but never had the time,” he said.
Jensen started law school in the fall of 2020, amid the pandemic, when opportunities like studying abroad were not possible. Thankfully, as he approached his last year as a J.D. student, St. Thomas Law once again offered its partner program with Pázmány Péter Catholic University in Budapest, Hungary.
Six St. Thomas students participated in this year’s course alongside law students from across the globe, including Ukraine, South Korea, the Middle East, Africa and Western Europe. This year’s class focused on sustainability and competition, but in the past, they have covered other topics, such as constitutional law.
“Generally, antitrust in the U.S. is viewed as almost exclusively anti-merger or anti-acquisition,” he said. “But learning about competition law from both environmental and international lenses gave me valuable insight into the field. My favorite part of the program was the different perspectives that the professors and other students brought to class.”
As part of the study abroad program, each student completed an internship. Some of the employers were Hungarian corporations or law firms, but others were U.S.-based firms with offices in Budapest. Jensen completed an internship with the Chicago law firm Baker McKenzie dealing with mergers and acquisitions.
“My internship was heavily focused on M&A, but I was able to work on projects that drew from my economics background as well as my legal education,” Jensen said. “One of my bigger projects involved finding market definitions for a renewable resources sector across all international jurisdictions to ensure competition laws wouldn’t be triggered by a proposed acquisition.”
To round out the academic and professional parts of the trip, Jensen took time for some personal travel while he was in Europe and spent a long weekend rock climbing in the Alps. Understandably, he says his experience in Austria is among his favorite memories from the study abroad trip, but he also goes back to the connections he made in his Pázmány University course.
“The chance to meet law students from across the globe was an unforgettable opportunity,” he said.