В нашей фирме завершается стажировка студента 2 курса ТГУ Евгении Булычевой. Женя подготовила замечательное эссе о своих ожиданиях, страхах перед практикой, полученном опыте и навыках. И поскольку Женя прекрасно говорит на английском мы ее попросили подготовить эссе об окончании стажировки на этом языке.
"Я всегда говорю на лекциях, что если ты знаешь язык, говори и пиши на нем. Работодатель это оценит выше записи у тебя в резюме об отлично окончании курсов по изучению языка" - Дмитрий Лизунов, управляющий партнер LL.C-Pravo

                                                                                Internship
Last year I was faced with a choice to what university to go. I decided to tie up my future professional life with jurisprudence and to do so I applied to the Law Faculty. To be honest, I didn’t have an exact idea of who is a lawyer and what he does, and regrettably it didn’t change after the first year of university. However, I had a warm feeling somewhere inside, that I was making the right decision choosing jurisprudence. To make sure, I decided to spend the summertime in a law firm as an intern. That was how I got to LL.C-pravo.
My first day of the internship was full of excitement about the upcoming meetings with clients, first trial and all the other different things lawyers do. “That is so thrilling that right now I will get my very first task to do! Surely, it is going to be either an important meeting or some interesting case!” – was in my head. However, I was so wrong. The first task that I got was to scan a formidable pile of documents. My first guess was that the clients were running late, that was why I got a temporary task to do. But neither that day, nor the day after had I met a single client.
At the beginning, I couldn’t understand why I was made to do such a routine work as that. I had much time to think about this while practicing a new skill of scanning. Only later, in the conversations with the professional lawyers I found out that sometimes there is so much important in work which doesn’t seem to be important at all, at first glance. First, the faster a lawyer scans or copies a document, the much time he spends on the actual work. Seems so simple, but what a great hint for a beginner like me. Secondly, during the work with the documents I was paying attention to what kind of papers I was scanning. I noticed how different the wording was comparing to normal language that we all use in the everyday life. That was a very serious moment – development of such skill as literate wording of the documents. Within the time of my internship I’ve written tons of applications, communications, appeals to learn how to use the new language that I’ve opened for myself, a juridical language. The majority of the papers prepared by me were used in the working process, which made me feel involved in real cases.
Another new segment, that I opened for myself was the mail system. To tell the truth, when I went to a Post Office for the first time, it was more just like a walk during the working hours for me. At that time I didn’t see all the seriousness of that task. What is more, I didn’t expect that sending mail is a standard thing that every lawyer does. It would be very unwise to think that sending mail is something less than important. As I found out, the only day that matters in mailing is the day when post is sent (unlike, in other spheres, when it’s more important when it is received). I found this fact pretty interesting. Here is a simple example of it: in jurisprudence there is a set amount of days within which the lawyer should bring the appeal to the court, if necessary (all the documents for the appeal are usually sent by mail). If he doesn’t do it within the set time, the case will not be taken before the court. Thus, no perfect wording would be needed if a lawyer doesn’t send mail on time. Such little important moments like this one show, how deep and thoughtful the job of a lawyer is.
When I understood that all the meetings with clients and other external manifestations of a lawyer’s work will not be experienced by me any time soon, I started to treat the tasks that I was given in a different way. For example, I learnt how to submit the documents in the court. Even though such process seemed very simple to me, it actually required much attention and care. You cannot just bring the documents to the Registry of the court and leave them there. You have to make sure that all the papers are sealed; all the copies are approved and so on. What is more, you cannot let yourself make a mistake, because any mistake either allows the opponent to use it against you or makes a document inappropriate for using the court.
Despite the fact that after the first year of university I didn’t have enough knowledge in jurisprudents, I tried to do my best in a technical part of the working process. Sometimes I had to communicate with people and the authorities to carry out all the assignments given to me. I had to cooperate with the Administration of Tomsk region, State Archive of Tomsk region, The Research Library of Tomsk State University. It wasn’t always possible to find the necessary information, because not everyone was ready to communicate with me. I had to learn how to find a special way of communication with each person in particular. Much talking, learning and interacting was made to get an idea of how to cooperate with people. I realized that the success of a lawyer’s work depends on how the lawyer builds the relationships with others.
Sometimes my tasks were very random. For example, one day I had to figure out when certain information was published in the original draft. To do so, I needed to get from the Archive and look through an impressive number of books one of which was supposed to contain the information. There were 94 books in total, and the Archive staff was very confused bringing all these books to me.
Finally, the most informative and useful part of my internship was the communication with some professional lawyers. It was very pleasant to be surrounded by those who care about the quality and the result of their work. They were always there for me to share knowledge and help out when I needed that. Working with professionals, I've got to know what to pay attention to in the interaction with clients; how to cooperate with partners in the most effective way; where to find the necessary information.
I was very happy with all the aspects of my internship, both good and bad ones, because I have received the experience that I wouldn’t be able to receive anywhere else. I have achieved some of the goals, which I set for myself a month ago. Only some of them, because to understand in which sphere of jurisprudence I want to work in the future, I need to learn about other spheres of jurisprudence. That will be happening during the second and the third years of university.
At this point, I know that if I have an opportunity to come back to LL.C-pravo as a worker sometime in the future, it’s a good chance that I’ll do that. To sum up, all the skills that I got in this law firm will be undoubtedly used by me in the future.