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!
"It is very exciting to draft legal documents! " Megan, you may be the first person in the history of the English language to have uttered those words. Sounds like you had a busy, laborious week! Can you comment on any of the cases you have been sifting through? Any particularly interesting ones?
ReplyDeleteThanks Mr. Bloom! I know that probably sounds strange, but the documents stemmed from many emotionally charged letters and it was an uplifting experience. I cannot comment too in depth about any of the cases, but I can say that there is one that, at this point in time, I am very invested in and I hope to hear how it ends up when the case is finally closed. For this one particular case, I have met the client on several occasions, I have drafted affidavits from character references for the client, I have sat in on two depositions for the case, and I have spoken to the client a few times on the phone about updates with the case. It is the one case that I have the most exposure to and it is a case that I truly hope ends very well for the client.
DeleteThis is so cool! Have you found any trends in cases you've gone through?
ReplyDeleteThanks Daria! Yes I have! A lot of the cases that involve social media center around children, whether it's a matter of custody or child support, parents always take off their gloves and bring out the big guns to fight for their kids. It makes sense. In a divorce situation, it's either petty or simple. The two parties can either fight over every little piece of property, every asset, every penny, or they can come to a peaceful agreement (about most if not all things). However, when kids get involved, the emotions are heightened and the stakes are higher. In some cases, the parents will use their children as pawns to fight against the other party. In other cases, the parents truly think that the other party is bad for their kids and wants full custody, at any cost. In less aggressive cases, the parents simply agree to share equal time. At any rate, kids are a big deal to parents, especially when the court becomes involved. Therefore, the parents will use whatever they have to - the end justifies the means and whatnot.
DeleteAw man, that sounds like it can be really intense. Thank you so much for elaborating :)
DeleteIt can get VERY intense. You're welcome. :)
DeleteI haven't drafted an affidavit yet, but I've come across a few! That's too bad about your tire; I've been finding driving is an important part of the whole job process, especially downtown Phoenix in rush hour.
ReplyDeleteThanks Michael! They can be fun but they can also be really boring? I think it depends on what type of case it is and what type of law the case falls under. In the case of family law, there is much emotion involved and they tend to be a bit more interesting (in my opinion, but to each his own).
DeleteRush hour in downtown Phoenix is the worst! Going into this experience, I was looking forward to the long drives; however, I did not expect the traffic to be this much of a nightmare! If anything, after all is said and done, I feel like this experience has made me a better (well, safer at least) driver. At least there's that!
That sounds exciting! How are affidavits used in the legal process?
ReplyDeletePopping a tire on the 202, now that's just bad luck! 900 cases is also a lot to sift through, are you sure you can finish that all in a few weeks? I would think each case would be quite a long document detailing events in the case as well as transcripts.
DeleteThanks Sejal! Affidavits are used to establish the facts of a case. In this particular circumstance, the affidavits stemmed from character reference letters for the client. There were so many! I drafted 23 of them, but I know more were sent in after I was done. People are really fond of that client.
DeleteThanks Dylan! Yeah, I was really scared actually, because I was not familiar with the area and my family was nowhere near me and the trunk of my car was broken at the time! Also, people get really aggressive when you go too slowly on the 202, even if you can't help it. I was afraid that someone was gonna run right into me! Thankfully, that did not happen. I finished all 900 cases! Because not all of the cases involved family law, I simply needed to check all of them to narrow down the list to only cases that involved family law. At first, I was reading through each and every document all the way through. However, after a few of those, I decided to search each document for the word "Facebook" and it also searched every related word (Myspace, Twitter, etc...). I read the paragraph that mentioned "Facebook" (or related words), along with the paragraph before and after it. This sped up the process significantly and helped me to narrow down cases that actually used social media as evidence, rather than cases that simply mentioned a Facebook post that a party didn't like or approve of.
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