Week 1 Post 2

THE OFFICE ENVIRONMENT

The regular office hours are 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. The office closes down between 12:00 p.m. and 1:00 p.m. for lunch. Mary has been the person supervising me and assigning me work. I have a large L-shaped desk that is located in the back of the office next to Mary’s. In the beginning of the week, I was working off of a laptop screen hooked up to keyboard and mouse. On Thursday, they installed a new monitor for me to use so that I now have two monitors to work with. 

In the morning when I get to the office, I first get settled and finish up any work that I had not finished from the day before. Once completing that work, Mary will assign me different tasks and files. On Monday, I mainly filed away closed files, ran bank errands, and sent out faxes to other solicitors regarding discharges of mortgages. On Tuesday, I started working on files regarding sales, purchases, and mortgages. So far I have completed trust account statements, statement of accounts, statement of adjustments, letters, faxes, and reporting letters to our clients as well as to the mortgagees. I have been told that next week I will be starting my own files.

As I have mentioned in my previous post, Mr. Morris was away this week. As a result, I have been working with Mary, his law clerk. When receiving new files and instructions, she tells me what tasks need to be completed verbally and occasionally writes notes on the file for me to follow. When I am finished with a document, I give it to Mary to look it over to confirm I have completed it correctly. 

This week I have liked almost all of the things I have done. The only complaint I have is with regards to filing. On my first day I had to put away a bunch of files. This was not that bad, but it was boring and I did not particularly enjoy it. 

I have not really had to use the phone yet as there are other law clerks who mainly handle reception. I have had to make a few phone calls to find out information regarding files. I am not responsible for checking voicemail or recording my own voicemail greeting. 

SCHOOL RELATED REFLECTION

I loved that we had assignments and quizzes instead of final exams. I liked that they could be completed on our own time and we would not have the stress of an exam. I also liked that one exam was not worth a big portion of our grade. I think that this way of marking allowed me to achieve higher grades because I was not relying on one final exam grade to boost my mark. It was broken up into smaller portions. That meant that if I did poorly on an assignment it did not have a great impact on my final grade. In addition, having weekly quizzes forced me to learn the theory material better. I had to study for the quizzes every week. I was also able to review my answers after the quiz. This was also a big help.

The idea of having answer keys posted on the bulletin board would be helpful. If I ever missed a day it would be nice to be able to look at what I missed the day before. The bulletin board we had was a good idea, but I don’t think it was updated enough. This tool should be implemented in future courses.