Joel

I have been involved in two large scale document reviews, one instructed by US attorneys and the other under English law. I have been responsible for familiarising myself which the details of complex litigious claims, reading relevant protocols and guidance from the fee earners and becoming acquainted with technical terminology. This is essential for the review process which requires a keen eye for detail and subtext and the confidence to make a quick judgement call about a relevant document or whether to escalate to the fee earners for guidance.

The reviews have both given me exposure to large complex claims in litigation and allowed me to hone my technical reading skills, my appreciation of the disclosure phase in litigation and broaden my understanding of technical knowledge and terms relevant to building an argument prior to proceedings.

After being offered my training contract, I took six months paralegal work with the Property Litigation team.

I worked on a pilot scheme for a large client and was responsible for many different duties from the beginning to the end of the litigation process. I would make initial calls to clients introducing the firm, calls to courts and counsel, sending document request letters and collating the correct documents into the correct files, producing a large MI spreadsheet for senior management to use to analyse the progress of the pilot and many other general duties for my supervising solicitor. The pilot scheme was intense with a large amount of clients and often times me having to work to extremely tight deadlines. The nature of the work meant that clients were often distressed or hostile and so taking calls and reasoning with the clients was a great experience in communication for me. I also had a hand at drafting standard letters to go out to clients and this was a great learning experience on the style that different solicitors prefer for their letters.

Seeing the litigation process from start to finish gave me a broad experience and enabled me to hone all of my core skills.

I spent two weeks at DWF on their summer vacation scheme after which I was offered a training contract that has been deferred to a February 2021 start.

For the first week I worked with the Business Restructuring team. I created a blockchain dictionary pamphlet to be sent around the firm that focused on the applications of the technology for law. The experience was great for me as it was a very small team and each acted as a mentor, showing me what they were working on such as a typical and a non-typical case that they deal with and the general charicteristics of their work.

For the second week I worked with the Real Estate team. This was a good contrast as this was a very large team. I was given some research to do on third party walls for a partner who found the work very helpful and used it to advise a client and I found this to be very satisfying. I also sat in on a conference call with a client and counsel and took notes and wrote them up for one of the trainees.

After the vacation scheme had ended, I was invited to PGP Friday where I had to sit with different partners including the managing partner and ask them questions, in a reverse interview style situation. This provided me with an excellent insight into what the future of law might look like from people who are experts in their fields and how to approach different people with different styles of questions.

The vactation scheme experience was brilliant and gave me a broad set of experiences that served me well in my first paralegal job.

I worked as a library assistant at a large library at LJMU. I was part of a large archiving programme that meant locating, logging and boxing books to give to charity as part of a library restructure.