Recommended: an internship at Frently

Curious about the legal practice?

Recommended: an internship at Frently

Do you recognize yourself in the following? Your study suits you well and you already know that you want to work in this field when you’re older. Yet you do miss a piece of practice in the study. You want to use what you have learned during your studies and help people. With this in mind, I applied for an internship at Frently and a few weeks later I was able to get started.

The first day

The first day is always exciting. You are curious about your colleagues and obviously you want to meet their expectations. This tension proved unnecessary. As soon as I stepped into the door of the Frently office I immediately felt at ease. My first day consisted mainly of watching my colleagues giving advice and learning the basics. After the first few days, I was amazed at how many procedures are started at Frently each week. I wondered why there are that many tenants in Groningen who pay too much rent. I was told that almost everyone pays too much rent. “That cannot be true!” During my internship, I found out that my colleagues had not exaggerated.

What is it you do during a normal day at work?

One of the tasks as an intern is to carry out rent checks. When performing a rental check, you go to the tenant’s house and you measure the room / apartment. You also have to write down what facilities the room has. After the rental check you can tell the tenant how much rent reduction he is entitled to. This is my favorite moment. Especially if you can tell a tenant that his or her rent is for example 95 euro too high. “Wouldn’t everyone get excited when hearing this news?” I certainly would. After the free rental check, it is up to the tenant to decide whether they want to continue to actually reduce their rent. Most tenants will start a procedure, because they prefer to spend their money on other things than on their rent.

In addition to the rent check, maintaining the contact with tenants is an important task, as well as sending updates about pending procedures. Tenants are always welcome to step by the office if they have questions or contact Frently by phone. You try to answer their questions as well as you can. Because of these unexpected phone calls or visits, the days at Frently remain very diverse and you learn new things every time. Another task is more administrative, because a lot of paperwork is involved in a procedure. All incoming documents such as the contact with the Rental Committee (de Huurcommissie), the landlord and the tenant must be processed. If all the incoming mail is correctly processed, we are able to exactly tell when the hearing takes place and at what moment the verdict of the Rental Committee becomes irrevocable etc.

What do you learn at Frently?

At the moment I’m writing this blog, my internship at Frently is almost done. During my internship I literally completed a crash course in Rental Law. Prior to my internship I had no knowledge of your rights as a tenant and I would definitely be shocked if my landlord had sent me a letter with the message ”Next month you have to leave your home’’. By now, I know that you can ignore this letter in the first place, because a rental termination on such short notice without a legal reason is not possible according to the law. Your landlord can only do this if:

  1. You are not behaving like a good tenant, for example, you have a cannabis plantation or if you haven’t paid your rent for three months or more. After organizing one or two parties or after accidentally breaking a window, your landlord doesn’t have the right to terminate the rental agreement.
  2. Your landlord urgently needs the living space for himself. This could be the case, for example, if he wants to demolish or renovate the house (and the renovation cannot wait until you’ve moved out). In this case scenario the landlord has to pay you a moving allowance.
  3. The destination of the place you are renting has changed. Imagine for example, the situation in which your are living in a space at the ground floor, at the Vismarkt, and the landlord wants to open a store. The actual destination of your home is retail or catering. In this situation your landlord also has to pay you a moving allowance.

This is just one of the many things that I learned at Frently. In addition to the legal knowledge, my communication skills have also improved and I have not spoken as much English in a long time as during my internship :). It is nice to be part of a team that specializes in a specific area within the law. Before starting the internship, I did not expect to be able to work so independently during my internship and I certainly did not expect to have my own responsibilities. My colleagues never said: ” Let me do it”, but my colleagues taught me how to do it, so that I could do it myself the next time. I had a really nice time at Frently and I definitely recommend you to do an internship at an organization liked Frently or at a law firm. Especially if you get the chance to start an internship at Frently!

Would you like to do an internship at Frently?

Feel free to contact us without any obligations. Who knows, maybe you will soon be part of team Frently!

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