WORK

His research focuses on civil law, civil procedure law and comparative law, in particular in personality rights and media law, housing and real estate law, family and matrimonial law as well as law of obligations, inheritance law and digital transformation law.

Joachim Pierer teaches first year and upper-class courses in private law at the University of Vienna and postgraduate courses for its LL.M. and MLS programme in Housing and Real Estate Law. His scholarly work includes articles, book chapters, and commentaries that have been cited several times by the Austrian Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court of Austria. His book on the post-mortem protection of personality rights was published in 2018. Two years later, it served the Austrian legislature as a template for the codification of post-mortem protection of personality rights in Section 17a para 3 of the Civil Code (ABGB). In 2021, the book was cited by the Austrian Supreme Court in a case on the scope of post-mortem protection.

Together with Professor Constanze Fischer-Czermak, he designed a course on real estate contracts, which introduces students to mistakes in contract negotiations and drafting as well as best practice examples based on case law for the LL.M. programme in Housing and Real Estate Law.

In spring 2020 he developed a course on personality rights, which he has been teaching since. There he covers topics such as hate speech, defamation, moral rights, privacy, freedom of speech and freedom of the arts.

As part of his research on inheritance law and digitization, another new course on “Digital Inheritance – Wills, Trusts, and Estates In The Digital Age” was created and will be offered for the first time in summer term 2023.

Joachim gives lectures in Austria and abroad. In addition, he is an independent consultant to businesses and law firms.