International and International Environmental Law

Yesterday I attended a talk at CU Law on "Careers & Prospects in International and International Envronmental Law."

The first speaker was Vail T. Thorne, Senior Environmental Health & Safety Counsel for Coca-Cola. Luckily the person who was in charge of refreshments purchased Coke products. He not only used an empty bottle from the beverages table throughout his entire lecture, but he also commented three or four times how glad he was that they "bought his product." It was a little awkward.

He spoke some about Coca-Cola products, and stressed that they were not an "American company" but rather an "American icon." His job is all about making sure that Coke complies with environmental laws, regulations, etc. at all of their plant sites - of which there are about 1000 worldwide. I was pretty surprised how evenly distributed the plants were, globally, with about 160 in North America. I wonder how many of those are in the US.

A quick Google search helps me find out that Coca-Cola claims to employ 9,800 people in the US. The same search also reveals that many, many people seem to hate the company.

The second speaker was William L. Thomas of Pillsbury Winthrop, LLP. I wish he had had more time, as he was a very entertaining, informative speaker. He spoke generally about International, and International Environmental, Law and what it takes to practice in these fields. Specifically he stressed that it was important to want to continue learning, and these areas were not for those who wanted to simply "put the kids in college and be done."

Two books he strongly recommended were Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World by J.R. McNeill and Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond.

During the Question and Answer period a student asked about the importance of taking business law classes during law school if you wanted to end up doing public work (or something similar, I couldn't really hear) and Mr. Thomas commented that it is important to create a good foundation while in school, mentioning Corporate Law and Tax Law specifically.

All in all it was a good presentation and I'm glad I attended. CU does a good job putting these talks together.