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Mr. Benoist is a 1976 graduate of Louisiana State University, and earned a Master of Business Administration degree from the A.B. Freeman School of Business of Tulane University in 1980. He earned his law degree from Tulane University Law School in 1990. He is admitted to practice in all Louisiana state and federal courts, and the federal 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, the federal circuit encompassing the states of Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi. Mr. Benoist has been admitted pro hac vice in the federal and bankruptcy courts of Mississippi and Texas on particular cases. Mr. Benoist has extensive business experience in petroleum
and surface land management matters. He has worked in industry
for a major oil company as an employee, and has advised major
oil and gas companies, large and small landowners and pipeline
companies as a private consultant. He has consulted with surface
and mineral landowners on issues involving coordination and timing
of competing, and oftentimes conflicting, multiple-use land management
principles. Since 1980, he has worked on urban, suburban, and
rural property issues involving wetlands, agricultural lands,
forest lands, and offshore Today, Mr. Benoist is engaged in the full time practice of law. He is a member of the Louisiana State and Baton Rouge Bar Associations, American Trial Lawyers Association, American Association of Professional Landmen, Environmental Law and Mineral Law Sections of the Louisiana State Bar Association, and the Uniform Title Standards Committee of the Baton Rouge Bar Association. He is a licensed title insurance agent for First American Title Insurance Company. He has served as an officer and director for the Baton Rouge Association of Petroleum Landmen, has been a member of the Miss-Lou Association of Petroleum Landmen, and chaired the AAPL Operating Agreement forms revision committee for the Lafayette landman association. He has served as a State Trustee, Zone Chairman and Regional Chairman for Ducks Unlimited, Inc. Mr. Benoist's trial practice includes occupational disease; products liability; personal injury and death cases; toxic tort; oil & gas and general commercial litigation; natural resource and property damage cases; employment matters; selected collections; bank foreclosures; uncontested divorce; and, contested successions. His transactional practice includes regulated and unregulated immovable property transactions, mineral title examination; conservation matters; preparation of contracts; drafting employment manuals and agreements, and general corporate work for closely-held, family-run entities, including formation, acquisitions, buy-sell transactions, and business succession planning. Mr. Benoist's clients include individuals, financial institutions, integrated companies, independent oil companies, pipeline companies, non-profit organizations, and family owned businesses. Mr. Benoist strives to maintain relationship-based, traditional hands-on lawyering, utilizing technology as a means to lower legal costs to his clients.
E-mail: mail@benoistlaw.com Website: www.benoistlaw.com |
Paul Benoist is a native of Natchez,
Missisippi. He is a product of the Natchez-Adams County public
school system, and a 1972 graduate of South Natchez-Adams High
School. He started working on his grandmother's farm at age 10,
harvesting pecans and clipping pastures. Later, Mr. Benoist worked
on other farms, operating typical farm machinery, and still later,
in the oilfields of southwest Mississippi, Concordia and Catahoula
Parishes, LA as a roustabout. He helped work his way through
college as a oilfield roustabout, laborer on commercial construction
crews, umpired youth baseball games, and lobbied for colleges
and universities at the Louisiana legislature. He was active
in the youth group of his church, played competitive sports,
and learned to hunt and fish in the Miss-Lou area. The foregoing
experiences combined to give Mr. Benoist the ability to relate
to people from all walks of life, as well as respect for private
property rights and stewardship of the environment.