My American law school has a program allowing students to do 1.5 years abroad and get a European LLM and these were my top two options. I am interested in international trade law and international commercial arbitration. I have been told that Catolica Global in Portugal is better for international business law. Utrecht is more prestigious overall, but I've heard its relative strength is in human rights law. I'd love to hear your opinions on this. One thing that worried me about Catolica is that I don't know Portuguese and feel that I wouldn't be able to interact well with the student body. I am also more interested in working in the US, Uk or the Netherlands.

I was in the same situation as you for three years ago, although my interest is more related to European Law in general. I had to decide between Maastricht (Netherlands) and Lisbon-Catolica. I picked Catolica because of the following reasons:

- Awesome faculty

- Small classes, intake of about 25 students per program and many classes not attended by more than 8-12 students

- Generally interesting courses and an interactive teaching technique (very much American inspired)

- The one in a lifetime opportunity to stay one year in lovely Lisboa

- The opportunity to learn some Portuguese, generally far more useful than Dutch

Regarding to student body, we had a fairly large amount of international students and the level of knowledge in English among the Portuguese students were excellent.

I spent a year on exchange in Utrecht as part of my undergrad degree, and I plan to go back in 2013 to do an LLM in Public International Law.

You're right that its biggest strength is in human rights law, it has top academics in that field and its proximity to the Hague offers a lot in the way of internships, work experience and court visits. But really its very good for any field of international law. While I was there all my modules were international in some way or another, I never actually did anything that related directly to the Dutch legal system. I'd say international students were probably in the majority, and most came from top universities across Europe, Australia and the US.

The city itself is a brilliant place to live. Very pretty with lots of canals, old architecture and classy bars, restaurants and clubs. Literally everyone there speaks perfect English so there's no culture shock. If you like sport it's excellent for that too, and only half an hour from Amsterdam. The SU does its absolute best to welcome foreign students and there's so much to do.

The only thing I would say is that lessons were a lot less rigorous than I was used to in England. Many dutch students go into law because they aren't sure about their career path, so it's a more relaxed, open atmosphere which might not be to everyone's liking (I'm hoping postgraduate will be more intense).

I have no experience of Catolica, so I can't really give you a comparison. But I would expect it to be a lot warmer - Utrecht gets very cold in the winter.

The above poster speaks very highly of Catolica so I'm sure you'll love it whichever one you choose.