Travel grant for a semester in Vancouver

For law student Simon Nordvig it has been a dream of his since he started law school to study abroad for a semester. With Gorrissen Federspiel’s travel grant backing him, he went on an exchange to Vancouver to study for six months at the University of British Columbia.

Overlooking the Pacific Ocean and with the mountains as his backyard, 26-year-old Simon Nordvig has quite a backdrop. As a law student at Gorrissen Federspiel, he received the firm’s travel grant, which in August 2021 was converted into a semester at law school at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. Simon Nordvig has long wanted to spend six months as an exchange student. The stay, which had been postponed several times over the past two years due to entry restrictions, finally became a reality in late summer. “It’s been a dream since I started law school. I actually think it’s a bit of a miracle that I got to go, and even to the university that was my first priority all along,” says Simon Nordvig, who has postponed his studies by six months in order to make everything work.

Blue sky and mountains

Vancouver was the dream destination because of its language, its excellent university and its opportunities for adventure. “It’s a vibrant metropolis surrounded by fantastic naturee. This week alone I’ve been snowshoeing in the mountains twice, and there are a lot of great ski resorts within an hour of Vancouver,” he says. However, Simon Nordvig has also quickly discovered why the city is known as “Raincouver”, having landed in what he himself calls an “exceptionally wet autumn”. “But when you’re at university and the sky is blue and you’re looking out at the Pacific Ocean and the mountains, it’s not bad. Then I’m itching to get out and experience this exceptionally beautiful and exciting country,” he adds.

Getting the debate going

The university is where Simon Nordvig spends most of his time. The classes are small – down to ten people – and at an “insanely high professional level”. His courses include comparative constitutional law, human rights, international contract law and the law of obligations, and the leading professor in the field gives the lectures. “You’re with the expert, and that makes fairly high demands on you to read up on everything – and even higher demands when you’re an exchange student, because it’s not always easy to discuss at a high academic level when you are on foreign ground, also linguistically,” says Simon Nordvig, who has also had to get used to the fact that the teaching is more discussion-based. “Most other law students here have completed a bachelor’s programme in another subject before starting law school. Many have studied political science, and that gives them a good basis for taking a more critical view of everything. A lot of teaching is therefore about why things are the way they are and the way they should be,” he says, adding that at the University of Copenhagen, law is taught more as a craft, based on specific cases and issues. “I still have to do my first case over here, because here all the teaching is based on theoretical discussions,” he explains.

Easy to make new friends

At the law school, there is one other Dane besides Simon Nordvig, but the whole university is characterised by exchange students from all over the world. At his campus alone, in a small enclave of townhouses, there are about 200 students from abroad, he estimates. Therefore, it has not been difficult to find a new circle of friends quickly. “Everyone is here with the same purpose, and that is to have a great exchange, get well established and have a great time with others. A new city and country are of course more fun to experience and explore with others, and fortunately it has been very easy to create such good experiences and make new, good friends,” he says.

Would like to go again

Although Simon Nordvig is still an exchange student in Canada, he is already dreaming of his next adventure abroad. “I really want to go abroad later in my career because I’ve found that it’s easy to settle and it’s a great experience. And fortunately, I know that Gorrissen Federspiel also offers the opportunity to work abroad,” he says. Simon Nordvig will finish his exchange stay in Canada in mid-January and start as an assistant attorney at Gorrissen Federspiel on 1 February 2022.