I'm in the process of revising EU law and an interesting EU law and Edinburgh based anecdote came to mind.

Those of you familiar with EU law will likely be familiar with Case C 19/92 Kraus. It concerns the mutual recognition of qualifications. Dieter Kraus was a German national who obtained his initial law degree from a German university. He then came to Edinburgh University to study an LLM. Upon his return to Germany it became apparent that in order to list his LLM qualification he had to pay an administrative fee amounting to a few hundred euros. This was essentially for consumer protection purposes to ensure the validity/authenticity of degrees/qualifications that professionals were purporting to possess. Dieter, like many students (especially those who have just paid for a pricey postgraduate degree) did not have the funds to pay such a fee, so he challenged it in court, representing himself. To his surprise, a number of questions were referred by the national court to the ECJ. So Dieter, fresh from his LLM and yet to practice, found himself appearing at the European Court of Justice. In the event, he lost the case. However, the judges were so impressed by his submissions that a short time later he landed a job at the court as a referendaire. A referendaire, by the way, is not simply a judicial assistant or clerk--they are appointed on a long-term basis and their job is to facilitate uniformity between the various chambers of the ECJ. It's a pretty powerful and prestigious role and a number of referendaires go on to sit in the ECJ themselves!