INTERNATIONAL LAW SCHOOL
Alumni Spotlight
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Khanh Nguyen (Class of 2022)
writer: HILS |
date: 2026.08.05 |
count: 57
Khanh Nguyen (Class of 2022) is a Principal at Rouse, an international IP practice, based in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
I graduated from HILS in 2022 and now serve as a Principal at Rouse, an international IP firm, in Ho Chi Minh City, advising multinational clients on trade marks, brand protection, and anti-counterfeiting across Vietnam. I am dual-qualified in Vietnam and Washington DC.
HILS gave me rigorous training in US law, taught in English, in a small international classroom where every student was known and challenged. That training serves me every day, because my clients reason in common law terms while Vietnamese authorities work in a civil law system, and my job is to translate between the two. HILS sharpened a skill my practice already demanded: holding two legal worlds in one head, and making each intelligible to people trained in the other.
What HILS gave me beyond the classroom mattered more. I did not come to HILS as a believer, but I lived for three years inside a community whose faith was real and worked out in practice: professors who prayed for their students and stayed after class until the concept landed, classmates who studied, ate, and struggled together through law school in a second language. Whatever a student believes, that kind of love leaves a mark. It left one on me, and I have tried to pass it on since.
The school lives by Micah 6:8: "Do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God." At Pohang I watched that verse practised, and it shaped my conviction that law is service, not status. IP enforcement work can feel adversarial, but it protects honest businesses, consumers, and the rule of law. Humility, the kind HILS models, is how you earn trust across very different cultures. I remain thankful, in the fullest sense, for the people who taught me service and humility.
To current and prospective students: do not worry about where you start, in faith or in law. Build your skills, treat people well, and stay open to where this community can take you. HILS will meet you where you are, as it met me. It prepared me for a career I could not have planned, and I am grateful.
