# Job Opportunities for Amis



## Sauerteig (Feb 28, 2013)

I am writing to express what sort of career possibilities might exist for me in the German speaking world. I am 38 years of age. I am a licensed attorney in New York, but my legal career is pretty much for naught. I have spent several years doing temporary document review after losing my job in 08. Over the past few years, about half of the work I have done is German language work. Most recently I worked on some pharmaceutical products liability involving some fairly dense legal and medical materials that are somewhat challenging for me in English. I have done some very light translation work, but more often I would simply summarize the contents of important documents. 

While I feel that my reading abilities are quite strong, my spoken German is choppy, mostly because of a lack of opportunity to practice. My written German assuredly suffers from various small grammatical and idomatic errors that, taken together, scream Auslaender. I am confident however that if I were there for even six months, my spoken and written abilities would improve dramatically.

My question is, given my education background and marginal career situation, what opportunities are available for a native American English speaker such as myself to expatriate long term, if not permanently in Germany. I am not sure what opportunities would avail themselves in the legal profession, as most opprotunities I know about concern international finance and what not, somethng which I am wholly unfamiliar with. I really have no desire to live in Frankfurt, but would be most content anywhere else. 

I have made token inquiries about teaching english there but most Germans speak better English than we do, or at least so many do as to make native English abilities of minimal value, if that.

Thanks in advance for your kind help.


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## Bevdeforges (Nov 16, 2007)

One potential route (though it may be kind of limited until they get this "sequester" business sorted out) is government employment in Germany. Federal Employment 

There is also (or used to be, at any rate) a special program in Germany for US lawyers to qualify as German lawyers. An online friend of mine did this while he was working as an attorney for the US Army. Don't have the details, but I did find a German-American jurist association that might be able to help you here: Welcome! - German- American Lawyers' Association

Anyhow, two possibilities for you to check out.
Cheers,
Bev


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