From Bremen to the world and back again…

But the question was: What is the best way to get there? “At that time, I noticed that almost a third of the members of the Bundestag are lawyers,” he says with a smile. “So that seemed to be the right way to go. When I then dealt extensively with the law, I realized that the subject penetrates many life situations very systematically, that is, it gives operating instructions for almost all everyday subjects. Whether it is the purchase of bread rolls or the purchase of house, everything in some way has legal components. I found this incredibly exciting.” One of the reasons Hoffman chose Passau as his place of study was because he had the opportunity to do a dual training in English law.

Thus Henning Hofmann immediately continued his studies in the city with three rivers with his Ph.D. “I’ve always wanted to approach a topic in a very personalized way and go deep into it so that I can make an academic contribution,” he explains. So Henning Hoffmann researched the topic of “predictive policing”, i.e. an attempt to use computer algorithms to predict criminal offenses – a combination of constitutional law, data protection law, police law and criminology. “It was a completely new phenomenon, there was no legal literature about it, and I enjoyed dealing with it extensively.”

After the Ph.D., it’s time for a change in 2016: The Four Months Around the World Journey mentioned at the beginning. After that, Henning Hofmann completed his apprenticeship with a two-year legal training. In order to “acquaintance with a new corner of Germany” again, he went to Mainz. The court, the prosecutor’s office, the authorities, the law firm – Henning Hoffmann knew everything during this time in the Rhine-Main region before he made a decision on the so-called “selection station”. “After nearly eight years of legal training, I put politics aside and definitely wanted to become a lawyer,” he said. “I was particularly interested in specializing in the areas of data protection law and information technology.”