to benefit New Zealand
Two Ethel Benjamin Scholarship winners this year
22nd May 2009
Two young lawyers have received this year's New Zealand Law Foundation Ethel Benjamin Scholarship - Kate Wevers, of Wellington, and Grace (Sim Dam) Lee, of Auckland.
Kate will begin studying towards an LLM at Harvard University in August. Her research will focus on law and biotechnology and Kate is interested in the different possibilities for decision-making frameworks relating to biotechnology.
One of Kate's two degrees (she graduated from Otago University in 2005) is a BSc, where she majored in biotechnology. The other is an LLB (Hons) and her honours dissertation was on the impact of the Hazardous Substances and Organisms Act on civil liberties for loss or damage caused by genetically modified organisms.
"I hope to one day play a leading role in the development of law at the interface of biotechnological development in New Zealand," Kate says. She hopes to achieve this through a combination of legal practice, academic discourse and government service.
She is particularly interested in how the legal system responds to and applies to scientific developments.
Before joining Russell McVeagh, Kate worked as a judge's clerk for Justice Tipping in the Supreme Court in 2007.
Grace will head to the UK at the end of September to read for an LLM at Cambridge University, where she intends studying international environmental law, focusing on climate change, and international economic law.
She has worked at specialist finance and corporate law firm Mayne Wetherell since completing her LLB (First Class Honours) and B Com in Economics at Canterbury University in 2007.
During her time at Canterbury University, Grace achieved a notable collection of prizes, beginning with the New Zealand Law Review prize for her performance in first year law.
In 2004, she received the Anderson Lloyd Prize in Land Law; in 2005, the Duncan Cotterill Award for best all round performance in the core law subjects and in 2007 was awarded the Deloitte prize in taxation.
As a result of being the top student in Public International Law in 2007, Grace was invited to join the Canterbury team representing New Zealand at the Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition in Washington, as the team's submission writer and researcher.
The Ethel Benjamin Scholarship is worth $25,000 to each of the recipients.
[Source: LawTalk]