As a dual degree student, seeing your peers who started law school at the same time as you undergo OCIs and other recruits and settle into their legal placement while your second summer. I was proud to see my friends doing fantastic things with their legal career early on - each person in my immediate friend group was thriving (quite literally all nine of them landed positions that were well suited for a 2L summer position, and have accepted articling positions at fantastic places and I can’t wait to see what their journeys have in store for them).
As a result, at the back of my mind I didn’t want my 1L summer to be a bust. I wanted to diversify my experiences and maximize output. I ensured that this summer I kept busy and tried to gain experience in different areas of the law. Was that the best use of my time? Absolutely. Another summer impacted by lockdowns, COVID-19 impacts, the emphasis was to continue to motivate myself to learn and grow as an individual. I worked four different jobs in the field of business law, securities litigation, employment law, and estate law! Of these experiences, I would like to reflect on my time at Epilogue Wills (“Epilogue”). First and foremost, it started on LinkedIn. LinkedIn has been an ally in learning more about what people do with a JD/MBA education. Alumni from my school have curated careers that range from strictly business-focused positions to a variety of law-based roles. This time I found lawyers who combined the two - working in estate law but not as lawyers, as tech entrepreneurs. It sounded like quite a different experience since it related to a legal tech based startup which simplifies the process of will-making for Canadians. Sidebar - If you’re reading this and are above the age of majority, you should definitely look into getting a will for your assets. If you’re a student and think you don’t need a will, think about your social media accounts - there is a will for that - the social media will! Back to my story, I applied via email and thought to myself that it would be really cool to work in an entrepreneurial environment where both co-founders are lawyers! The culture Culture is key. It can make or break your experience and drive. Being surrounded by individuals who treat you like a valued team member even if you’re the most junior person at the company/ firm can set the tone and vary the experience from if that was not the case. The best place to get a feel for culture is in the interview. The first impression of speaking with potential team member(s) and expectations is why I enjoy partaking in interviews to learn more about the goal of the company and people who work there. The interview was a conversation! I got to learn about both co-founders and the company, as they learned about me. When they extended me the offer - I accepted immediately! I was immersed in the company’s culture through meeting the rest of the team and being in constant dialogue with team members based on my tasks. The co-founders, as busy as they were expanding the business across Maritime provinces, were only a Slack message away when it came to meeting with me to provide me with feedback on the tasks I did. It really aligned with theories I learned in Organizational Behaviour about the ideal environment to work in! The co-founders always asked if I had the ability to enjoy the nice weather, partake in summer activities and make time for myself. They made sure I was not overburdened, which was greatly appreciated from the standpoint as a student who may not know if the work they are doing is ever enough and up to par with the standards. Even as a student, the co-founders asked for my take on the law after conducting research - I felt like a valued member and got comfortable with discussing the law outside of a classroom. What did my role look like? My role consisted of two major responsibilities: legal research and blog writing. The legal research component sounded daunting at first, since there was an end of term project associated with it. However, when I was assigned this topic - I would get subsumed with conducting research and comparative analysis that I wouldn’t even notice the time flying by. I worked with the co-founder to showcase my findings, discuss legal opinions and continue to contribute to my end of term project. Blog writing combined my interest in the law and writing - sound familiar? It differed slightly from my experience here at Legally Brown since the emphasis was on specific topics such as Notary publics and will making. I also improved my SEO writing, and received feedback and direction directly from the Director of Content. Whichever task I received, I never felt like I was abandoned or doing an ancillary piece - it felt like I had a voice and my opinion mattered. I enjoyed the level of autonomy as well and definitely had a positive experience. So for those individuals who have an opportunity to work at a start-up I say embark on it! You will learn a lot more than technical skills. My love for estate law I had an inclination towards corporate transactional work since undergrad - based on the mere specialization and my gravitation towards accounting and finance based courses. This carried through in the MBA. However, there is overlap between the aforementioned disciplines and estate law in Personal Finance. That course taught me the importance of wills and estate planning not for myself but the impact and ease it would have for my loved ones. Besides that, everything substantive I learned was on the job - so by no means are the courses prerequisites. I had a crash course in wills and estate law taught by the co-founders in the beginning of my internship. Working at the Epilogue this summer showcased the dynamic nature of the law - the digitization of witnessing, the accessibility in creating wills from one’s home, and the impending changes in legislation globally. Conclusion My 1L summer was definitely a boom. A second summer of “non-traditional'' big law allowed me to choose my own adventure through different types of roles in the legal industry and apply the knowledge/ skills I obtained from my education thus far. I’m really excited to see what this school year has in store for me and where my journey takes me next summer. By: Karen Randhawa During the summer of 2020, I worked with a team of four other students (Elif Babaoglu, Amanda LaBorde, Irene Lai, and Junghi Woo) to support Professor Garrick Apollon of the University of Ottawa, with a visual legal research project studying the film Black Code on Cybersecurity. It was a visual legal advocacy program brought to us by the Hennick Centre, in partnership with UDocs. Over the summer, the team worked on conducting research on big data. We worked together to create a published research document for what would ultimately become a CPD/CPE accredited course for legal and business professionals. In addition, we researched potential experts to depose on these findings.
I thoroughly enjoyed this experience as I had the opportunity to explore the legal realm of privacy, technology and big data law. Watching the documentary, to analyzing and answering questions associated with the need for reform in this field was intellectually stimulating. Prior to this UDocs experience, I had shown an interest in the field through a course I took named Legal Values: Law, Ethics and Social Media. My research paper was on catfishing and the need for reform in the area of law. A take-away that stayed with me is the overlap between privacy breaches and freedom of expression that lags behind in the area of internet law. So, when students are stressing about what to do in their 0L/1L summer, I would strongly encourage them to seek “non-traditional” opportunities as such. Those interested in the field of Visual Legal Advocacy can always contact UDocs directly. There is much to learn in the legal field that is constantly evolving, and with the changing nature of society – do not be disheartened if plan A does not play out. By: Karen Randhawa |
Legally BrownThree Osgoode Hall Law students sharing their lived experiences and providing *unsolicited* advice. Archives
December 2021
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