The Atlas IP Inn desires to receive the names of students interested in membership in the Atlas IP Inn for the upcoming academic year. The Inn receives these names from Academic Representatives from Houston area law schools.
Inn membership for a student runs for an academic year. Thus, each summer, the Inn asks each school to submit student candidates.
The Atlas IP Inn is a member of the American Inns of Court system, a long-standing organization that has fostered the inns of court tradition, the primary mission of which is to foster excellence in professionalism, ethics, civility, and legal skills. Inns of Court differ in material ways from bar associations and other organizations for lawyers. For more information, see the links below.
Page for the Atlas IP Inn: http://inns.innsofcourt.org/for-members/inns/the-honorable-nancy-f-atlas-intellectual-property-american-inn-of-court.aspx
Page for the national American Inns of Court organization: http://innsofcourt.org
An American Inn of Court, unlike a bar association, is an organization whose membership is limited in number and by invitation only. The Atlas IP Inn includes judges, lawyers, law professors, and law students from the Houston area who meet at least five times a year and participate in programs and discussions on matters of ethics, skills, and professionalism in the practice of intellectual property law. The Atlas IP Inn provides opportunities for members to hone their legal skills in a social setting with attorneys who share interests in professionalism and excellence. An important emphasis of the Inn is to provide an opportunity for less experienced lawyers, including student members, to gain insight from judges and experienced lawyers who are among the best of the Houston IP community.
The membership of the Atlas IP Inn is approximately 120 members, who are classified as Associates, Barristers, and Masters of the Bench, depending on years of experience in the practice of IP law. Another member category is Pupils, student members who are focusing their studies on IP law at local law schools. Each year the Atlas IP Inn hopes to have Pupil members from each of the three law schools (University of Houston Law Center, South Texas College of Law – Houston, and Thurgood Marshall School of Law). Membership also includes emeritus members, law professors and administrators from each of the law schools, and Judicial Counselors from the Federal District Courts of the Southern District of Texas.
If you are selected to be a Pupil member of the Inn, the list below describes what you will experience during the academic year and what you should consider if you apply.
- Five evening dinner events with pupilage group presentations where you are expected to use your best efforts to attend all of them. Typically, two Inn dinners are during the Fall semester, and three are during the Spring semester. If you will be taking evening courses most days of the week, Inn membership is not a good fit for you.
- Assignment to a pupilage group, which is a group of Inn members who work together and do a presentation on an IP law topic at one of the dinner meetings. Each pupilage group has around eight to ten members, and typically, two pupilage groups combine to give the presentation. As a member of a pupilage group, you may have significant work to accomplish as a contribution to your group’s presentation.
- There are dues for membership. The student rate is $50.00 for the academic year, payable once you are selected.
- Attend the new Pupil member orientation meeting early in the fall semester. For Fall of 2024, that meeting is scheduled for 4:30 p.m. on Wednesday, September 4, 2024 in a location in downtown Houston.
- One purpose of the Inn is to provide mentorship to less-experienced attorneys and to student members of the Inn. Thus, there are various opportunities to learn from practicing lawyers and expand your network in the Houston IP community. For example, beyond networking at the dinners, the Inn holds other networking events purposefully designed to allow less-experienced attorneys and students to meet more-experienced attorneys.
- It is an honor to be selected as a Pupil member, and there are only a limited number of slots available to each law school. Thus, if you apply, are selected, but do not attend, you are eliminating another student’s opportunity to be a member. Such an outcome would not be viewed favorably by others and should be avoided by you.
Follow the instructions listed below with the representative at your school as provided in the table at the bottom of this page. After collecting the names of interested students, each school’s Academic Representative(s) (see Contact Name column in the table below) will assess the candidates and select the students who will be nominated to the Inn.
Although the Inn’s final deadline for law schools to submit names of selected Pupils is Thursday, August 22, 2024, each school’s internal deadline for students to express interest in being selected is prior to that date (see below in its respective instructions).
| School |
Contact Name | Application Instructions per School | phone | |
| University of Houston Law Center (UHLC) Institute for Intellectual Property and Information Law (IPIL) |
Prof. Greg R. Vetter | Please follow the instructions on the page at this link. |
gvetter@uh.edu | 713-213-0360 |
| South Texas College of Law Houston (STCLH) |
Prof. Ted L. Field | Please email Prof. Field requesting the form used at STCLH for Inn membership. Complete the form and return it to him. | tfield@stcl.edu | 713-646-1770 |
| Texas Southern University Thurgood Marshall School of Law |
Sarah Doezema | Please email Sarah Doezema for instructions on how to apply. | sarah.doezema@tsu.edu |
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