ELSA was founded in Vienna on the 4th of May 1981 by students from Poland, Austria, Hungary and Western Germany. The organisation was actually started in Hotel Regina. The aim of the association was to stimulate international relations between students across the Iron Curtain. Today, ELSA is the world’s largest independent law students’ association counting more than 70,000 members, represented at more than 432 law faculties in 43 countries, ranging from Ireland to Azerbaijan, and from Finland to Malta.
ELSA Ireland has been in existence since 1991, when the then Managing Partner of leading Irish law firm A&L Goodbody met a member of the International Board by chance on a flight from Brussels to Dublin. He liked the sound of the organisation and the opportunities it offered to law students and young lawyers and decided to set up a branch in Ireland. Anna Austin, who is now Head of Division of the Registry of the European Court of Human Rights, was a trainee in A&L Goodbody at the time and was elected as the first President of ELSA Ireland.
ELSA Ireland was initially a very active National Group and indeed was one of the strongest national groups within the ELSA Network. Unfortunately, ELSA Ireland began to weaken over the years but, in 2010, it regained Observership status within the Network and went on to become a full member of ELSA International at ICM Cologne in 2013.
Between 2013 and 2020 ELSA Ireland continued to grow substantially while attracting many partners, working on national and international collaborations, growing competitions such as the International Negotiation Competition and the most important of all, holding the most successful Summer ELSA Law Schools (SELS) on Corporate and Finance Law. ELSA Ireland would break record in the process of organising the SELS’ as it received over 340 applications during the year 2018 becoming the only National Group to ever push these numbers.
Since 2022, ELSA Ireland has continued to grow and develop. There are currently four very engaged and active Local Groups within the Irish Network: ELSA DCU, ELSA Maynooth, ELSA Trinity, and ELSA University of Galway. Furthermore, there are five more Irish law faculties with which the National Board is currently working to establish Local Groups: the School of Law at SETU, the Faculty of Law at University College Cork, the Sutherland School of Law at UCD, the faculty of law at the Technological University of Dublin, and the School of Law at the University of Limerick.
ELSA Ireland 