Saturday, February 28, 2015

Week 3 (February 23, 2015)

3:54 PM Posted by Megan Stone 12 comments
Hello! This was my third week on site and I continue to learn new things every day! Though Mr. Levine was out of town for the week, my on-site mentor and the paralegal at the firm both taught me about day-to-day operations of the office and about legal documentation.

On Tuesday, I wrote my first affidavit ever. For those of you who don't know, an affidavit is a legal document summarizing, in this case, the contents of letters speaking about the character of one of Mr. Levine's clients. It is very exciting to draft legal documents! A lot of it is just stating facts (affiant's name, address, phone number, relation to client, etc.); however the rest of the document contains eye-witness accounts and things that the affiant has observed or heard regarding the client in relation to the matter of the case. I also answered the phone a lot!

Normally, I would have a more lengthy entry for Wednesday; however, when coming home from the internship on the 202 on Tuesday, tragedy struck when a nail ripped right through my tire and I had to use a spare until Discount Tire could retrieve new tires for me on Wednesday. Long story short, I stayed home on Wednesday (other than my short trip to Discount Tire) and I did some more research for the Senior Research Project. The amount of cases that I still have to work through (after sifting through about one fourth of the 900 cases I've found involving social media) is extensive. However, I am confident that I will have it done in the next couple of weeks and then I will move on to the surveying portion of my research. Along with these cases, Mr. Levine has also provided me with a case involving social media being used as evidence. He will redact any personal information shown in the case so that I can use it as an example for my presentation.

On Thursday, I spent the whole day working on two things: my first task was to work on as many affidavits that I could before our paralegal needed her computer back (as the one I use was abducted for billing purposes for the day), and my second was to scan large piles of documents into the system using the copy machine. About 700 pages later, the day was over and it was time for me to leave.

Though I do not usually work on Mondays, I will be working this upcoming Monday due to the fact that I wasn't able to come in on Tuesday.

See you soon!

Saturday, February 14, 2015

Week 1 (February 9, 2015)

12:41 AM Posted by Megan Stone 12 comments
Hello!

This week was my first week on site. On Tuesday, I went to a hearing at the courthouse in Phoenix, in addition to going through cases involving social media and family law and narrowing down any interesting ones I find. With the help of my on-site mentor, I was able to obtain a list of cases involving social media in order to help with my research. On Wednesday, I helped the paralegal and learned my way around the office a bit more. I organized all the bills and prepared them to be sent out, and I learned how to file things within the system that the office uses. On Thursday, instead of going to the office, one of my mentors let me accompany him to a trial that he had been preparing for. He had to ask the judge ahead of time for me to observe but the judge said it was fine for me to sit in the courtroom during the trial for educational purposes. Overall, my week was very exciting and busy. I'm very pleased with all of the opportunities I've been given to watch and learn, and I'm looking forward to immersing myself even further into this field over the course of my internship.

If anyone from outside my school (or anyone who doesn't know) is interested, I will be posting at least once a week over the next two and a half months (except for maybe one week for spring break, we'll see, I might do it then anyway).

See you next week!