GMAP Internship Report / GMAP インターンシップ報告書
No. 2022-03
I. Basic information / 基本情報
1) Name / 名前：陸 子静2) Enrolled year / 入学年：October 2020
3) Period of internship / インターン期間：2022.8.2 ~ 2022.8.29
4) Place of internship / インターン場所：HIGASHIMACHI, LPC
5) Person who accepted your internship / インターン受入担当者：Mr. Shohei TEZUKA; Mr.
Zhiming MAI; Mr. Peter CASSIDY
6) Content of work in your internship / インターン中の作業内容
Case studying and discussion on shipping, shortage of cargo (Maritime Law), divorce, international
adoption and heritance; attending meetings with clients; reviewing charterparty and other agreements.
II. Details and impressions / 詳細と感想
Including the following points: merits, demerits, lessons, contribution to your future career, personal
experience etc.
One of the reasons I chose to come to Kobe University was that it offered internship opportunities atJapanese law firms. Although due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this wish did not come true until in mylast semester, I was very excited when I was told that HIGASHIMACHI Law Firm, a local firm in
Kobe, would like to take me as an intern. To be frank, working in a foreign law firm with everyone
who was new to me made me feel really nervous. Luckily, after I heard that my mentors would be Mr.
TEZUKA, Mr. CASSIDY who were my teachers from shipping law classes, and Mr. MAI, who is asa Chinese practicing lawyer in Japan, I became a little bit relaxed. However, I was still worried about
whether I could get along well with other Japanese lawyers and completed the missions they gave tome in a good way.
With excitement, curiosity and nervousness, I stepped into the office on August 2nd, the first day of myinternship. I was hospitably welcomed and soon received my first mission, which was to get familiar
with a shipping case and prepared to attend a meeting with the client at case two days later. I wassurprised that I could have a real chance to meet our clients. The documents consisted of many
correspondences, and thus, I could have a close look and learnt how lawyers communicated with theirclients in English and Japanese, especially how expressions could be more appropriate in different
situations. In addition to this shipping case, I had the chance to attend the meeting with our client fromthe other case where our client was sued for paying compensations. I was even asked about my1

opinions on this case during the meeting, and I was glad that I could be of some help to the case.
Although the most cases I involved in were shipping cases, there were other cases in different field.
When lawyers in the law firm heard that I still could not figure out which field I wanted to specialize
in in the future, they gave me advice and share their own experience on how they found which area
they were interested in. They also gave me their cases from different legal fields to help me find out
whether I could be interested in those fields, including disputes in maritime, marriage, divorce,adoption, and some noncontentious works. I felt that I was so lucky to have such opportunities to lookthrough the legal documents from these cases. More importantly, I have learnt not only the relevant
regulations and rules applied in these cases, but also lawyers’ defense strategies and thoughts. Since
there were several cases involved Chinese clients, I could make comparisons between Japanese law
and Chinese law on the same issue, which is in fact one of my purposes to hope to have an internshipin a Japanese law firm.
The noncontentious works I have done were almost contract review. I read these contracts for the
first time ever, and many clauses were new to me. Worse still, I could not even understand the meaning
and the reason why the parties agreed upon, and incorporated, certain clauses in their contract.
However, they always explain the reasons and purposes of these clauses to me clearly. Every time
when I had questions about the cases, lawyers, whether they were my mentors or not, always answered
my questions kindly and patiently, and then encouraged me to ask more questions if I had any. Eventhough, sometimes because of the language barrier, they might need to explain to me the same thing
once more, they were always happy to help me. Thankfully, I could learn more about legal practiceinstead of only legal theories from textbooks.
There are no doubts that having real things to do during the internship is my fortune, but there weretwo other parts during this internship that I felt lucky to experience. One was the weekly legal English
class in the law firm, and the other was the daily lunchtime, because during the classes and lunchtime
I had many chances to talk with other lawyers and exchanged our thoughts with each other. Particularly,
during lunchtime, we talked not only about our work, but also about our daily life. It was a good
opportunity for me to practice Japanese and English, sometimes it could be challenging to me though.
I feel really lucky that I could have a such excellent internship in the HIGASHIMACHI Law Firm.
This was the most valuable internship and I truly express gratitude to everyone who helped me during
the internship. I believe what I have learnt from this experience will help me a lot in my future career.

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（Date / 記載日：2022/8/29）
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