October 11, 2012 – Daniel Holman
For summer following my 1L year, I worked with the European office of a U.S. staffing and business services company in Vilnius, Lithuania. Building in part on connections to the Lithuanian-American community, the company had recently found success in expanding to Europe by recruiting IT professionals in the Baltic to provide services U.S. and Western European companies. Beside the opportunity to go abroad and experience an in-house legal department’s perspective, the legal underpinnings of the cross-border investments and trade in services on which that business depended was an added point of interest. In addition to reviewing contracts and other work from the headquarters in Detroit, I spent much of the summer interacting with Lithuanian business and government leaders to understand the benefits and challenges of attracting and managing foreign investment. Lithuania’s position as something of a crossroads nation–both geographically between east and west, and developmentally in the way it has built an advanced economy while still in wake of rapid social changes following independence in 1991–make it an interesting place to observe and think about how globalization plays out in different corners of the world. It was also a reminder that development doesn’t just happen in the global south, but within individual countries and regions, and that opportunities for growth and development in one area may shape and be shaped by events far afield.
If you have any questions about Lithuania, in house work, or how any of this actually relates to development, don’t hesitate to contact me at dholman@jd14.law.harvard.edu.