LSU Law Class of 2023 LLM graduate Sigrid Soetaert, right, with fellow LLM graduate Chloé de Planchard de Cussac, following commencement exercises on Saturday, May 20.
When Oslo, Norway-native Sigrid Soetaert landed in Baton Rouge last summer to pursue her LLM at LSU Law, her lifelong dream of studying law in the United States had finally come to fruition. Just weeks after celebrating graduation with her classmates at commencement, Soetaert is now preparing to take off for New York City to launch her legal career with Air France USA.
“When I found out I landed the internship I was overjoyed. It brought me to tears,” said Soetaert as her selection as just the second LSU Law LLM graduate for a highly coveted one-year internship with Air France through a tripartite agreement between the Law Center, the global airline, and Aix-Marseille University. “It’s been my plan to move to New York City for so many years—and now it’s really happening.”
The intensive interview process for the internship spanned nearly three months, and Soetaert said she feels beyond lucky to have been given the chance to begin her career with such a prominent global company.
“I will have the opportunity to take on a wide variety of responsibilities, from communicating with clients to answering petitions for suits,” she said. “I’m excited to work with the legal department head and learn as much as I can about the industry.”
Soetaert earned her law degree from the Université Jean Moulin-Lyon III in Lyon, France, before coming the Paul M. Hebert Law Center. She chose to attend LSU Law after being impressed with the Law Center and campus community during a visit as an exchange student in the spring semester of 2021.
“Southern hospitality is a real thing. People in Louisiana are very warm and nice, and the professors take time to explain everything and make you feel worthy of being a student here,” she said.
Soetaert said one of her favorite LSU Law experiences was having the opportunity to compete in the Ira S. Flory Mock Trial Competition and experience American oral advocacy, which she said is very different the French court system.
“We don’t have these moot court competitions in France since most of the French procedures are written, so trying advocacy was super cool,” she said. “Pleading, defending, arguing and living the American court was one of the highlights of my time here.”
Soetaert plans to take the New York Bar Exam in July and remain in the United States to practice business law. The Air France internship is a steppingstone to achieving her career goals, she said, and she is thrilled to begin her journey as an attorney.
“I am most excited to experience the process of absorbing knowledge and transitioning from law student to someone who works within the law,” Soetaert said. “This will be my first real deal encounter with what it means to be a lawyer and work within the legal field.”
Lila Tahidousti, who earned her LLM from LSU Law in December 2021, was the first to land an internship through the tripartite agreement and she is currently working for Air France USA in New York.
