No doubt you have heard the rumors about the cutthroat environment in which law students and lawyers work. You probably also have heard about the adversary system, the money, the greed, and the power struggle etc. I have heard of them, too. In fact, I have also seen them all on Law and Order. As I finish my fourth week as a pretend practicing lawyer, I must confess that I have seen very little cutthroat and, instead, a lot of cooperation.

About three times a day some attorney at the firm will send out a system wide email asking for assistance or expertise on a specific topic and take advantage of the collective knowledge pool of a large law firm. They get responses within seconds from their colleagues on questions that might have taken them hours to research. Perhaps even more frequently, one client matter gets referred to several different attorneys each with their own expertise to provide the client with a comprehensive solution. Even as a summer associate / pretend attorney, I quickly realized how practicing law is all about utilizing and contribution to the power of people.

I was given an assignment to research enforcement actions states’ Attorney General brought under the authority of a certain regulation. Unlike judicial decisions, these enforcement actions are typically not published or readily available. So I had to get creative with my research. After some preliminary research on the internet, I found out that one practicing attorney / internet law professor has published several articles on the topic in question. I found his contact information on his firm’s website and even though I knew it was a long shot, I e-mailed him anyway with my question. Much to my surprise, he called me within thirty minutes offering his insight and expertise for no profit or fame. The same thing happened when I called a state administrator. He answered my email within ten minutes. I was getting a lot of good information from these folks when I suddenly realized that I have a family friend who works in this field and deals with this question on a daily basis. A conversation with her gave me almost all of the information I needed for my project. A while back, I wrote a blog entry on the importance of networking in the law profession. I realized this week that it is important because the law is a people profession. We need each other to best serve our client.

Posted by Wen at 3:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The third week felt a lot more real than the first two to me - real in the sense that I felt like my days looked a lot more like the days of a first associate. I have been working on my first two assignments for the past 1.5 weeks and am nearing the end for both. For the past three years, Bingham has put aside its formal rotations for its summers and instead adopted a more flexible approach where each summer can work on assignments in different practice areas simultaneously. This allows the summer associates more opportunities to follow a case or deal from beginning to the end. So my first two assignments were to write a legal research memo for an employment discrimination litigation and to provide general assistance in a private equity deal. Both projects have been very rewarding experiences to me so far but each with its own challenges.

With respect to the litigation project, I felt pretty comfortable with the assignment because I have written many research memos for school, for a judge, and for an impact-litigation firm and I have taken a course in employment discrimination in law school. The challenge for this project is to correctly judge the scope of the project or to put it more simply--to know when to stop. Unlike first year associates, I was not faced with a strict deadline so with a sincere desire to produce my best work, I probably spent a lot more time than I should on the project. I definitely came away feeling like I need to work on my efficiency. After all, this is a business and nobody wants to pay me for 20 hours worth of work for a simple memo. The corporate assignment, on the other hand, involved a very steep learning curve for me. Law schools, unfortunately, are not very business-orientated. We learn about plaintiffs, defendants, causes of actions, burdens of proof etc and not about memorandum of understanding, stock certificates, and debt-asset ratio. As a result, I felt pretty useless when I first met with the assigning attorney and the partner on the deal. I quickly picked up a couple of text books on mergers and acquisition and am now beginning to understand the general ideas behind an acquisition. Also, Bingham has weekly training for summer associates to help us understand each of the Bingham's key practices areas. After the first corporate practice session, I felt like at least I could begin to see the forest. Even though I have a lot less experience in corporate law, I find the practice area and the idea of business deals fascinating. In a way, it's like taking a law school class in an area you have close to zero knowledge of. It's challenging and completely exhilarating.

Posted by Wen at 11:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)