My first week of working with a lawyer is just about done. In just this one week, I have soaked up a good bit of information. I must admit, at first I was nervous about working in a lawyer's office. I didn't know what really to expect, what kind of assignments he was going to give me, and what I would be doing, in general. However, within just this first week I have already been to court, done research, and come up with projects for during the internship.
The first two or three days of work was mainly researching a case that Montoro is working on at this time. I, then, began letter-writing to clients and prosecutors. Letter-writing to clients is much different than writing to a prosecutor. For a client, one must write in a "common-man" voice. This means that I can't use law terms that even I don't understand completely. These letters need to be clear, concise, and to the point. A five-year-old should be able to read it and understand it (to a point, of course). Writing for a prosecutor, though, is different. With these letters one must write with a very professional tone and one can (and sometimes must) use law terms. For any kind of letter, there is usually a general outline that I followed. The things that change are the dates, names, and specific information, but in general, these letters followed a template.
I was able to go to court on Thursday for the first time. I was able to attend domestic violence cases and let me just say, it opened my eyes to the world we live in. Witnessing these cases and the people involved opened my eyes and made me think about what people are capable of doing and overcoming. Because so many probono lawyers who are appointed to represent the victim don't know what they are getting into, I have been asked to create an outline for a basic overview of what to expect during these hearings. This way, probono lawyers who don't usually work with domestic violence cases will know what to expect, what important questions need to be asked, and what they can do to fully prepare themselves.
This first week of my internship has given me the opportunity to really see how a lawyer works and what they go through on a daily basis. Now that I have a project lined up for this semester, I am confident that I will be successful in creating something that is truly needed in the state of West Virginia. I am confident that I will learn many things and may even become an expert in something. But, I will have to wait until I am finished with this internship to be confident in saying that I may become an expert. Until next time...
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Great work here, Freddie. It's great to hear that you're diving right into some major projects in your internship. You provide some nice analysis here of the distinction between the letters written for clients and the letters written for prosecutors. You talk about the different tones that you need to create for these letters and audiences. What are some specific techniques you use to create these different tones? Word choice? Sentence length or complexity or word order? Defining terms within the text? Something else?
ReplyDeleteOne thought for your next post. After your finish the readings on "organizational culture," spend time describing the organizational culture where you're interning and explaining how you've come to identify these aspects of the culture and anticipating how this culture might influence your work going forward.
The outline project that you describe sounds like very interesting and important work. As you work on it, consider using this space to describe the research strategies that you use to learn more about the topic as well as the rhetorical decisions you use to produce this particular text to serve a particular audience for a particular purpose.