Internship Report

Complied by

Shahzad Arain

 

            During winter term break 2008, I completed

my four week internship at the Bennett Law Firm in

Houston, Texas. The Bennett Law Firm is located in

Downtown Houston on 515 Louisiana, Suite 200 – the

heart of the historical theatre district. The Firm

consists of several attorneys and staff-members who

work in a 1900s brick building. I chose to apply to the

Bennett Law Firm for my internship after email-

exchanges with Mr. Bennett.  He answered my

concerns about what he expected to accomplish and

provided information about what Münster University

law clerks had done in the past.

 

            The Firm is a Texas Professional Corporation

engaged in the practice of law on a national basis

having the capability of providing a full range of

litigation services to all manner of business entities,

individuals, and organizations. Furthermore, Mr.

Bennett is Board Certified in Consumer and

Commercial Law by the Texas Board of Legal

Specialization and is a former federal prosecutor.

One concentration in which I got an illustrative and

rewarding insight is the representation of lawyers

and medical professionals.

 

            During my time at the Bennett Law Firm, I

was involved in a lot of different tasks such as legal

research, case briefings, and other office work. I did

legal research on lawyer advertising and barratry. 

This topic traditionally is not part of the education of

German law students although it can be of enormous

importance for a lawyer’s practice because violations

of the ethics rules can lead to restrictions as well as

to the revocation of one’s license.  I saw the

importance of this when I attended a presentation

Mr. Bennett gave at the famous University of Texas

Law School in Austin which I helped prepare some

legal research about the latest developments in this

field of law for the presentation.

            Barratry is a complex issue which concerns

an attorney’s behaviour in soliciting clients. An

illustrative example is when a lawyer specialising in

aviation law hears about a collision between two

airplanes at an international airport. Although the

firm never represented any of the airlines involved

he suggests to his Client Development Committee

calling and telling the CEO’s of each company that

the firm is sending a team of drivers with limousines

to the airport to greet officials from both airlines as

they arrive in town to respond to the crash. He also

proposes setting up a hospitality suite for the officials

at the airport hotel and placing copies of the firm’s

brochures in the seat pockets in the passenger

compartment of each limousine and on the coffee

table in hotel suite. These actions will raise several

questions of barratry-statute violations. To answer

whether any kind of lawyer advertising is legal

behaviour or whether it might be restricted or

prohibited by any barratry statue one always has to

be aware of the tension between the commercial

free-speech rights of lawyers, the state’s interest in

regulating the conduct of lawyers and the privacy

rights of individuals who are or may be the objects of

attorney solicitation.

 

            I twice got the opportunity to go to Austin

with Mr. Bennett to hearings in front of the Texas

Medical Board where he was representing physicians

who were being charged for violations of some of the

rules of the Texas Medical Board. Following the

procedure of the hearings was pretty interesting and

exciting for me as I had been able to get familiar with

the claims in detail before and had joined the

conversation between Mr. Bennett and his clients just

before the hearings started.

 

            I also was able to attend some court hearings

at the local federal- and district courts which gave

me a nice insight in the US-American court procedure

and the possibility to compare it to the German court

procedure. One of the big differences which came to

my attention concerns the role of juries in civil- as

well as in criminal cases. I knew in theory that juries

were very common in US-American trials but I had

not expected them to play such a significant rule in

daily court proceedings. For example, the process of

jury vetting at the beginning of a trial is a complex

and time-consuming procedure in which the

attorneys of both sides introduce the potential jurors

to the detailed facts and legal issues of the case.

They are asked about any prejudices. In one of the

cases, dealing with a driving while being drunk-

matter, several of the potential jurors considered

themselves as being biased for partly abstruse

reasons which made me thinking again about the

usefulness of jury trials.

 

            Finally, I spent time on working on the firm’s

website informing potential interns about my

experiences at the firm and name the possibilities

there are in Houston of interest for other German law

students. I prepared information about the Bennett

Law Firm office, the district in Houston as well as of

other helpful information dealing with

accommodations, transportation, sight-seeing,

shopping and entertainment.

 

            As Mr. Bennett is willing to express his

interest in other law students from the University of

Muenster coming to his firm to complete their FFA-

requirement of a three-week-internship and to

continue the relationship to the University of

Muenster, Professor Thomas Lundmark of the

University of Münster was contacted about the

relationship. As one of the benefiting results of this

contact, Mr. Bennett will be coming to Muenster in

October where will be giving a lecture to German FFA

students. 

             In conclusion, my internship at the Bennett Law Firm in Houston, Texas was an outstanding experience. I got a deep and inspiring insight in the work of an US-American law office but beyond that Mr. and Mrs. Bennett as well as the other friendly and cooperative staff members took a lot of effort to make it a helpful trip for me in every way, too.