Verica Trstenjak passed her bar exam in 1987 and obtained her doctor's degree at the Faculty of Law of the University of Ljubljana in 1995.
Verica Trstenjak pursued her doctoral studies at the University of Zürich (Universität Zürich), the Institute of Comparative Law of the University of Vienna (Institut für Rechtsvergleichung der Universität Wien), the Max Planck Institute for Private International Law in Hamburg (Max-Planck-Institut für Internationales Privatrecht), and the Free University of Amsterdam (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam).
She gave various lectures outside the EU at the universities in Sydney, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Tokio, Seul, Astana, Aruba and New York.
She has published more than 300 legal articles and several books on European and private law;[2] she gives speeches at numerous international conferences in Slovenia and abroad (e.g. conferences on Common Frame of Reference (Münster, Osnabrück, Trier); Luxembourg: European Jurists' Forum 2011; Trier: Jahrestagung der Gesellschaft für Rechtsvergleichung 2011; Berlin: Humboldt-Universität, 2012; Salzburg: 24.
Europäische Notarentage, 2012; Barcelona: European Jurists' Forum 2013, Vienna: General Reporter at IACL - International Academy of Comparative Law, 2014; Amsterdam: Keynote Speaker at International Conference of Consumer Law, 2015); Kazakhstan: International Notary Conference, 2018; Madrid: European Women Lawyers Association (EWLA), 2019; Salzburg: European Academy of Science, 2023.
From 2017 until 2022 she was a member of the Management and Executive Board of the FRA - European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights.
In 2020 she was awarded the Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art, 1st Class by the Federal President Dr. Alexander Van der Bellen for her exceptional scientific merits in the field of EU law and for her contribution to the deepening of relations between Austria and Slovenia.