Arine van der Steur graduated in Civil Law and Philosophy at the University of Groningen in 1997. Prior to joining Bird & Bird in The Hague in 2002, she was a lecturer at the University of Leiden and a fellow of the Meijers Institute, where she was reading civil law and worked on a phd-thesis on property law. She specialises in commercial contracts and telecommunications law. Arine advises various telecommunications operators on digging rights, antenna sites and transfer and ownership of fibres, ducts and networks. Further she advises both Dutch and international clients on commercial and regulatory issues in the field of telecommunications and IT law, as well as drafting and reviewing distribution contracts, general terms and conditions, IT and e-commerce contracts.

Arine teaches on issues of digging rights and ownership of networks at post academic level at the University of Leiden. She regularly publices on digging rights; she is the co-author of highly regarded legal manual on the Dutch Telecoms Act ("Tekst en Commentaar Telecommunicatiewet").