BRIDGING BARRIERS: CONVERSATIONS ACROSS LEGAL CULTURES  

An Oral History Series by Emails to a Young Lawyer
Curated & Presented by Can Yildirim
Interview No. 8

GUEST BIO

Learn more about the Bridging Barriers series, read my reflections on the previous interviews, and watch their recordings HERE.

Codes and Curiosity

Defne Kahveci’s entry into law followed a path familiar to readers of this series. As a child, she listened to stories told by a relative who served as a judge. In a cultural context where the mere status of a judge carries symbolic weight, stories about decisions, consequences, and responsibility informed her career choices.

Defne’s relationship with the law inspired her path on one hand and spurred her intellectual curiosity on the other. Even during her undergraduate years, she felt drawn to reading beyond the syllabus and understanding why legal rules took the form they did. Law, for her, transcended a codified body of answers; it offered an intellectual structure worth examining. Her resultant instinct to maintain curiosity rather than settle for closure shaped the path that followed.

Discovering That Law Is Already Comparative

One of the most revealing parts of our conversation was Defne’s description of encountering U.S. law before leaving Turkiye. At Yeditepe University, visiting American professors taught courses in contracts, torts, and legal drafting alongside Turkish law. At first, this exposure raises a practical question that many students ask: What use is foreign law if I practice domestically?

Defne located her answer in the history of her context. Turkish law itself, she realized, stems from comparative roots in German, Swiss, and French law. Once you see that borrowing is already embedded in the system, the instinctual reaction that law must be purely local fades. With that in mind, Defne began to explore her international options, assured that such choices would nourish her Turkish roots.

Summer programs in Cambridge and Yale sharpened this initial realization for Defne. As she focused on her legal English studies, conversations with lawyers from Japan and elsewhere revealed that they approached their LL.M. programs as something more than an academic ornament: a strategic tool. These were practitioners sent abroad by multinational employers to gain fluency in U.S. legal reasoning; through their training, they would not abandon their home systems but would instead gain the proficiency to navigate cross-border work more effectively.

For Defne, this was an inflection point. Studying abroad broadened her options while simultaneously allowing her to understand them more fully.

Challenges Imagined and Faced

By the time Defne began her LL.M. at the Boston University School of Law, she felt better prepared than many of her peers. Prior exposure to IRAC-style reasoning, legal English training, and basic familiarity with case analysis softened the initial shock of U.S. legal education that many other guests on this series have noted. Still, she faced a significant challenge. Taking classes alongside J.D. students meant participating in discussions shaped by diverse life stages and intellectual backgrounds. Many classmates had studied economics or finance as undergraduates; others brought years of professional experience that matched or exceeded hers into the classroom. Understanding a judicial decision often required economic intuition and policy awareness, not isolated doctrinal reading skills.

What stood out was the dissonance between Defne’s diagnosis of the difficulty and the challenge she faced in reality. The barrier was not her lack of fluency in English, as she had feared. It was her lack of fluency in the context.

Different Systems, Different Approaches

As our conversation unfolded, Defne articulated a distinction that runs through this entire series: the difference between systems that prioritize certainty and those that reward interpretation.

In Turkish law, she explained, a clear statutory rule often concludes debate. In U.S. law, even clear text invites argument, shaped by the convergence of precedent and narrative. Neither approach is inherently better. Each necessitates and trains different instincts. Rather than choosing between them, Defne developed her fluency in both honed her ability to switch. In Turkish contexts, she adopts a direct, conclusive voice: the law is clear, and so is the outcome. In U.S.-oriented discussions, she allows herself to explore alternatives, to test arguments without demanding immediate resolution.

Hierarchy, Openness, and Academic Culture

Defne’s current position as a research assistant added another layer to our discussion. She described Turkish academia as structured and hierarchical, recounting her traversal of clearly defined roles and norms of formalized respect. Her experience in the U.S. offered a different model, one in which academic relationships are more horizontal, fostering personal guidance and less risky opportunities for intellectual curiosity.

This contrast reinforced a broader lesson: legal systems shape more than doctrine. Through their reverberations and incentives, they form relationships from the courtroom to the classroom. The processes of expressing authority, raising questions, and handling disagreement all reflect deeper cultural assumptions about knowledge and power.

Mentoring Through Experience

Looking ahead, Defne envisions a career that combines teaching, mentoring, and practice. She spoke with particular care about advising prospective students considering education abroad. Her method is deliberate and realistic. She advises that students begin with the risks.  Financial strain, workload, and cultural adjustment pose the greatest challenges, even if their impact is easy to overlook. Students must consider and address them before moving to logistics.

When I asked her for one final insight, her answer captured the approach that had guided her: Be open-minded. Open-mindedness toward systems, people, and the possibility that your legal reflexes can change without being erased enables new paths.

What I’m Taking With Me

Defne Kahveci’s story reminded me that while bridging legal cultures sometimes requires dramatic reinvention, at other times it asks you simply to listen to codes and cases. Such proficiency supplements rather than supplants existing training and instincts. Becoming a global lawyer or scholar is thus about learning when and how to summon which tradition. That judgment, cultivated slowly through experience, may be one of the most enduring legal skills