At the end of July, Heidi Storberg graduated with a Master of Laws degree from the University of Helsinki. She will begin working in the EU in the autumn. A certain course in law and the contribution of Tuulia Tanskanen and other alumni mentors may have made the difference in securing the post.
Some people have time for demanding pastimes, like 90-kilometre ultraruns. Senior Legal Counsel Tuulia Tanskanen's demanding hobby is the mentoring of students. She graduated from the University of Helsinki with a Master of Laws degree in 2013. Since her final years of study, some 15 years ago, she has volunteer-mentored future lawyers on an EU law course organised at the University of Helsinki.
Law students can take part in the European Law Moot Court, an annual case law competition. To support this, the Faculty has designed a course that advances students' expertise in EU law.
An integral part of the course is mentoring provided by Tanskanen and other legal alumni.
"In 2011, I took part in the competition myself. After the competition, our team decided to establish an association to support future generations studying at the Faculty of Law. Since then, our association's active members have given the course together with the Faculty," Tanskanen says.
It takes an enormous amount of time. In the autumn term the mentors meet with course participants once a week, and the meetings continue at the same rate in the spring for several months.
"The meetings can stretch for several hours. In addition, we organise intensive weekend sessions for course participants and, to cement the teams together, occasionally other activities too."
For the common good, for selfish reasons
Tanskanen points out that there is no limit to how much time you can spend on the course. Where does the motivation to contribute time and effort come from?
First of all, you have to love the whole thing. Otherwise, people would probably not spend five hours on a Saturday to listening to talks on EU law. Tanskanen notes that the reasons for volunteering as a mentor are in fact largely selfish. Then again, not many would have the energy for it for long without getting anything back themselves.
Tanskanen feels she too learns a lot every time - about not only specific fields of law, but also the mindset of future lawyers.
"I have the chance to be swept away by students' enthusiasm for argumentation and discovering legal cases that support their arguments. Lawyers like to challenge, twist and turn. It's wonderful to have the opportunity to listen to students' conversations, encourage them and ask further questions."
Reading professional literature at home on your own would be enough if you only wanted to learn more about your field. A key factor for Tanskanen is the social aspect of mentoring.
"This way, I keep myself up to date in a rather fun way. Having recruited new employees in my career, as a mentor I've also seen the kind of work future lawyers want to do and the notions they have about their careers."
A career in the EU
At the end of July, Heidi Storberg graduated with a Master of Laws degree from the University of Helsinki. She took the preparatory course for the European Law Moot Court in the academic year 2024-2025.
According to her, alumni mentors' viewpoints were an important course element.
"They were able to talk about things from a student angle, while, thanks to their work experience, providing a perspective on how things actually work. For instance, Tuulia Tanskanen has worked in competition law. Textbooks don't explain the practical conduct of causation assessment pertaining to the alleged damage under competition law. Tanskanen described the matter on the course in a very illustrative manner," Storberg says.
In the autumn, Storberg will begin working abroad in an EU position.
"Taking the course most likely affected my getting this job. After all, we jumped in the deep end of EU law and pretended to take on legal cases, as it were. At the very least, I gained valuable tools from the course."
In early August, Senior Legal Counsel Tuulia Tanskanen had a baby. While she is on family leave from work, she will continue to serve as an alumni mentor this academic year as usual.
In the coming years, Tanskanen aims to advance her skills in an increasingly general direction.
"I think I focused on specialising in my field of law in the first 10 years of my career. Now, in an increasingly complex world, broad-based expertise is ever more useful in business law."
