I love the old signatures pressed into the varnish of the meeting room table :)
Give examples of oral and written communication used in your work placement. Did you draft your own communications? Are you using 'clean formatting'? Are you using Outlook? If so, what features are you using?
Examples of oral communication would be using the telephone and speaking face-to-face to convey what needs to happen on a file, or where we are going right now, or Stephen or John (the lawyers here) might shout down the stairs to let me know a client has arrived and their Wills need witnessing.
Examples of written communication would be internal and external emailing and Word/WordPerfect documents (such as to-do lists, official documents and letters raised for accountants and clients). I draft my own communications, and 'pp' some letters. Stephen will review other letters and documents to ensure everything is represented and with the right 'feel', and then (sometimes after he makes edits) he will sign. I am not sure what 'clean formatting' is. We use Outlook here. I don't have my own Outlook account, but a few features which I have seen being used here and that I really like are:
- The task list
- Highlighting emails or a folder and sending them all to a .pdf file which can be referenced as a file tree within the resulting .pdf. Wonderful!
I have been working largely alone. Some Annual Resolutions have to be raised manually rather than through Fast Company so I have been doing that and it is new to me. It has been very busy here with 6 closings for Diane in the past 2 days, so I have tried not to bother her. I used my precedents from the Corporate Law class and other documentation raised using Fast Company for different clients in order to raise Annual Resolutions and Consents manually.
Are you using a To-Do List/notebook to prioritize your work to meet deadlines?
I would be using the Outlook task list, but in absence of that I am using Google docs in order to keep a running account of what is outstanding and for whom, and also what is done. I have a list for each person in the office which I open first thing when I arrive in the office and don't close all day. I update each list as I work on files, and bring forward any unfinished work to the next day's list in the final hour each day in the office.
What is one of your weaknesses? How did you overcome this in your work placement?
A big weakness I have is being tempted to adopt other people's shortcuts without checking enough in the moment to see whether they are thorough and simply quicker, or whether they could do with an overhaul as the resulting work no longer encapsulates everything it needs to. When coming to somewhere where the team is established it is difficult to discern one from the other with speed.
Provide recommendations for refinements to the curriculum (i.e. are there specific elements we should spend more time on to better prepare you for the work place?) What is right about the curriculum? What needs to be improved upon? Which courses did you prefer - explain why. Which courses did you not prefer - explain why.
Shorthand would be very useful to learn. I haven't had to use my transcription capabilities (although I've been told that Stephen does dictate to tapes sometimes), but I have had to take letters without being in front of the computer. This resulted in a lawyer having to speak very slowly and me using up half a pencil!
We need to be able to reach out to each other in a wider way once placement starts. Having a long-standing area (better than the temporary Facebook pages raised by each successive class which don't connect more people than that particular class) online where people can access grads from each successive commencement year to fling out any questions in the moment they may have, or to draw people together to share.
Stop telling students they need to be able to do the job when they turn up at placement. The curriculum teaches about 25% of what you will need in order to do the job when you walk through the door to your placement. Students need to know that, and need to know that they will/should not be expected to just be able to walk in from school and do the job of a Legal Assistant. That isn't possible without help, and it would be irresponsible of any lawyer to let us try. I have had recourse to advice and help even though I'm working along - even if it's at the end of the day. Students can be scared into feeling that they need to be work-ready on day one of placement. It's not going to happen, even for the most resourceful student unless they have some experience of a law office already.
The parts of working in a law office that the course covers are thorough as far as they go. So much more is added to them on beginning to use the knowledge in a law office, but it is a good start.
I preferred Corporate Law (Erin taught in such a friendly and accessible way, Fast Company I found intuitive and I liked doing the work) and Wills and Estates (it made sense to me and again I like Estate-a-Base). I am not using the advanced spreadsheets functions, or advanced Word. I am using typing (although I am never rushed so time would not be an issue if my typing speed were slower than it is). It would be very useful to learn WordPerfect, including the coding.
How will you continue to learn and develop professionally?
We are learning on the job all the time. The senior lawyer here (John) says to me he is still learning after being called to the bar 30+ years ago. That said, I want to work for a year or so and then begin to go through the Law Clerk course at Conestoga either part-time or online if possible in my chosen field. I'm not sure what that field will be yet.
We have weekly meetings during which the lawyers let us know of different changes also.
No comments:
Post a Comment