Final Blog

When I think back on this project, I don't think I will be appreciative of learning a single skill or lesson. What I will take is an understanding of the environment where lawyers or even most office workers work. I completed single-day simple tasks, multi-day projects, and outside the office experiences. I now understand what is effective in an office environment, as well as what isn't. Once you start to get into the groove with the system you become so much more effective and efficient. I was getting so much less work done in the beginning than I was once I understood how the online system worked, became more comfortable talking to clients, and just became confident in what I was doing. 

I think I got out of the project what I was hoping for. I wanted to do this project because I wanted a better understanding of how the legal system worked and simply what a lawyer did in the day to day. Law is a real-world skill that is applicable to what I am hoping to study. I now understand how the government and companies interacts with law and how people resist it. The system is designed to be as encompassing as possible. There isn't really a loophole to exploit in things like workers comp or personal injury, because you need to provide doctors notes, witnesses, and 3rd party reviews. You need to prove that your injury not only happened, but is directly related to your injury. You need to provide months of pay stubs and so many financial documents in order to prove what money you should earn. 

I think Ms. Miguel-Courtad did a great job of navigating me through this learning process. With what cases were in litigation and what are opportunities were available to me at the time I thought I did a good variety of tasks and kinds of cases. She gave me the opportunity to experience a hearing even though she herself didn't have one when I was available by allowing me to follow another lawyer. I think she did a great job of accommodating me, answering my questions, and guiding me. She had the confidence in me to accomplish the tasks on my own when I could, and then also was always available to answer any question I had from menial to complicated. 

I think my regret is not coming into the project with more specific goals that I could communicate to my mentor so the experience was more personalized to me. It still worked out very well for me, but if I had more specific ideas of what I wanted to do it might have helped Ms. Miguel-Courtad find tasks that were fitted to me. 

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