CILS Benefactors Inc.

The goals of CILS Benefactors Inc. are simple: to foster and create environments in which lawyers - old and young - and law students are required to use law as the common medium for cross-cultural communication. When an experienced lawyer seeks to explain the legal priorities of his or her legal system (and legal culture), he or she of necessity must take into consideration the legal and social priorities of the audience being addressed. CILS Benefactors Inc. wishes to assist in the training of lawyers and law students in the skills of recognizing cultural and social differences and the nature of the legal systems that have emerged from particular societies.

CILS Benefactors Inc. supports four programs, each of which has a particular impact on assisting lawyers and law students in improving their cross-cultural legal communication skills.

1. The International Internship Program places law students in law firms, legal departments, and international organizations outside their home countries. They not only work in an international office; they also live in the a foreign country during the period of internship. CILS Benefactors Inc. contributes to the travel and living expenses of the interns,

2. The LL.M. in Transnational Commercial Practice not only offers students from throughout the world the opportunity to learn in classrooms in Austria, Poland, China, and the United States but to engage with classmates from throughout the world (there were 33 lawyers aged 25 to 55, representing 13 legal systems in the 2019 sessions). CILS Benefactors Inc. provides substantial tuition scholarships to those admitted to the LL.M. program.

3. The Senior Lawyers Program sends experienced lawyers to pro bono, short-term teaching assignments to law faculties at universities in Eastern and Central Europe, the former Soviet Republics, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. The educational benefit is not limited to the students n these classes. The lawyers who teach in the program learn a great deal as well from the students they teach, the faculty members of the host university, and the city in which they live during the teaching assignment, CILS Benefactors Inc. contributes to the travel and living costs of the pro bono teachers and the training they receive that equips them to better function in a foreign legal and cultural setting.

4. The Foreign Direct Investment Arbitration Moot competition brings law students and faculty from universities from throughout the world to compete in regional and global rounds of arbitration. Regional and pre-moot competitions are held annually in Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America, and Russia. The 2019 Global Finals were held in the United States and attracted 150 arbitrators and more than 350 students. CILS Benefactors Inc. contributes to the travel costs of many of the university teams, particularly those from developing or under-developed countries.

CILS Benefactors Inc. is uniquely equipped to meet the goals that it has identified for the four programs that it supports. The President of CILS Benefactors Inc. is the founder of the Center for International Legal Studies (CILS), a non-profit entity established in Austria in 1975. CILS has more than 5,000 lawyer members worldwide. It has links with more than 50 universities worldwide. It established the international internship program in 1978. It partnered with Lazarski University in Poland, with Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary, with Lixin University in China, and with Boston University in the United States to establish LL.M. programs in those venues. It has a larg network of universities that accept its appointees for teaching assignments. All these contacts are available to and art utilized by CILS Benefactors Inc.

The category above testifies to all that CILS Benefactors Inc. has accomplished thus far. All this has been achieved with a somewhat minimal effort at fund raising. In fact, until now, fund raising has been rather casual, CILS Benefactors Inc. is convinced tat, with a more formalized and sophisticated fund raising effort, it will be able to expand its support for the four programs identified above and open the way to new projects as well. The early returns on those fund raining efforts are promising.