Week 3, Post 1

1. 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?

a. They don’t really use precedents like I am used to from school. They go into the correspondence file for the client, choose a letter that looks vaguely like the one you need to write, save it as the new date and a brief description of what’s in the letter, then finish writing the letter. There’s no blank letterhead like at school. I do draft my own communications, but I am required (reasonably) to submit it for review with Sandy or Heather before I can finalize it. For Outlook, the only real features we use is the attachment and the signature at the end of the email.

2. Provide an example of a problem you encountered and describe how you solved it.

a. I had a real estate appraisal disclosure from the respondent that I had to copy and scan into the system for our electronic files but the paper jammed a couple times. I didn’t have time to rectify it that day but I did the next day; I went page by page through the copy and compared it to the original. While I was doing this, I realized I was only missing 10-15 pages for the one tab, but everything else was perfect. So I simply just recopied the original documents that I was missing, slotted them in, made sure everything was 100% before binding both the original and the copy.

3. Are you using a To-Do List/notebook to prioritize your work to meet deadlines.

a. I have not been given a client to complete from start to finish, so I’ve simply been doing the work that has been handed to me.

4. What is one of your weaknesses?  How did you overcome this in your work placement?

a. I get very anxious/nervous, so whenever someone gives me instructions, it feels like it just goes in one ear and out of the other. I made myself breathe while I was given instructions, and I also actively listened to what was being told to me. I am still not perfect by far, but it’s better.

5. 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.

a. I really don’t think this should be a two year course, I think it should be longer. The fact we only briefly touched on personal injury litigation when there’s so many potential employers in the Tri-City alone speaks for itself. Family law should be a whole year, considering we only briefly touched on that as well. I enjoyed family law because it was a field I was determined to work in after the fact, and because it was quite comprehensive this time around instead of the first time I took the course. I didn’t like corporate because it was rather boring; necessary, but boring.

7. How will you continue to learn and develop professionally?

a. If I happen to work at a firm that offers to pay for continued education of their employees, I would take advantage of that. The law is always changing, and though I have no wish to be a lawyer, I do want to understand the area of law better.