Thomas Bettge (German Studies, ’14) checked in with us. Here is what he reported:
I matriculated at Penn State’s Dickinson Law School in 2014. My background in German Studies enabled me to secure work the following summer with one of my professors, who was completing a dissertation comparing the horizontal dimension of constitutional rights in German, Canadian, and American law, and needed a research assistant capable of working with legal academic literature published in German.
During my second year, I discovered an interest in tax law. My undergraduate experience naturally led me in the direction of international tax, and in addition to completing coursework in that area, I secured a summer position after my second year with a transfer pricing group, helping multinational clients to navigate tax disputes and invoke tax treaty protections when the IRS and a foreign tax authority disagree on pricing matters. After graduation, I joined the same group of attorneys as an associate, married my fiancée of almost six years, and moved to Houston.