眾律國際法律事務所

From May 21st to July 19th, I was blessed with the opportunity of being an intern at Dr. Kuohua Fan’s law firm, Zoomlaw. As an incoming college sophomore, I was still exploring different fields of study and law was the only one I was curious about. The closest link I had with this field was that my mother studied law, but she rarely talked to me about it so all I knew was that there was a lot of logical thinking and memorizing involved. During my time at Zoomlaw, I realized that memorizing was clearly not all there is to law, it’s a lot more complex and it’s entwined with the things we encounter in business and in real life (not just in court).

On my first day at the firm, I was instructed to study various types of business contracts and then create templates for them. As someone with zero experience in this field, everything was new to me, and I actually found contracts fascinating because these words held so much power when they were strung together onto a piece of paper in a certain way. I didn’t realize just how formidable these agreements were, you could literally disobey a few words and get fined or thrown behind bars. Through this, I learned about the existence of these different types of contracts and a lot of things in life suddenly made sense. For example, the reason why your parents won’t tell you about their profession in detail might be because they signed a confidentiality agreement. They could potentially break contract laws by saying too much. Aside from an increase in awareness of the involvement of law in everyday life, I picked up a lot of law-specific jargon that were commonly used in contracts. This will definitely be useful in the future! Although I spent a significant amount of time working on these contract templates, I can’t say that I’m able to immediately draft a ready-to-use franchise agreement, but I am familiar with how these contracts are written and what they’re made up of.

The fun started when I was given the task of researching how to register a franchise in the United States. I really enjoyed writing up a summary of the documents that a business would need to prepare in order to register their franchise and creating a PowerPoint for my mentor to persuade clients to allow the firm to register on their behalf. In a way, I felt like I was involved in the process. The researching part was extremely important to me because I knew that this information would eventually be passed onto a client after being filtered and presented by my coworkers, so I made sure that all the critical points were included in the summary. Another aspect that I enjoyed was participating in the translating and reviewing of the actual contracts that the firm’s clients sent in. Going over the contracts and collaborating with the lawyers at the firm was also one of the things I adored about this experience. Even if I only gave a few suggestions, I felt like I had contributed to the discussion, so I’m really thankful that I got to participate.

Aside from that, I got to research intellectual property border measures in various countries for the firm and in the process I learned a lot about how an individual’s intellectual property can be protected in countries other than their country of origin. Each day at the firm was busy but satisfying because I always looked forward to being assigned a new task after I completed the previous one. I’m eternally grateful that I got to experience work life in this ambitious environment!

I would like to thank my mentor and the people at the firm for being really patient, kind, and helpful. Everyone worked hard and was focused on their tasks and that encouraged me to do my absolute best each day. Last but not least, I’d like to thank Dr. Fan for giving me the chance to learn through this internship. Thank you for allowing me to join Zoomlaw for the summer, I was able to pick up useful skills and acquire knowledge that I had never come across before. I would definitely recommend this firm for aspiring lawyers because Zoomlaw is the epitome of a successful law firm. There’s always a new and exciting case that they’re working on and it will inspire you to work towards your own goal(s).