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I am a placement student in the Agriculture team at Michelmores. Although every day is quite different, I have set out everything I did on a busy Friday.
8:30 I travel with Lauren, the placement student in the Family team, to the Exeter office by bus and it is conveniently a short bus drive and walk away from my room. The walk through the fields near the office is particularly pleasant.
9:00 – 9:30 My day starts at 9 and I head over to the Agriculture team side of the office and greet everyone and log on for the day. The first fifteen minutes or so are usually a time to check any new emails or messages and update my to do list. At this point I’ll have an idea of what high priority tasks need to be done today.
9:30 – 11:00 After checking my emails I can see that a client has approved the final draft of a Deed of Variation, which I had been able to help put together, and the lawyer has given me the green light for completion. As the client lives far away, the easiest way to sign is online with DocuSign. I prepare the final Deed for completion and upload it to DocuSign. I then send this to the client so that they can sign it.
11:00 – 11:45 I then have one of my regular catch ups with a supervisor. I usually update him on the types of work I’ve been doing over the week. I had also recently drafted a Part 36 Offer for one of his matters and this is a good time to get some feedback on my work. I’ve been able to work on several of his cases throughout the year, so this is also a chance to hear how these are progressing and he sets out whether there’s any tasks he thinks would be useful for me to tackle next week.
11:45 – 12:15 I then get on with a quick document organisation task. The team often deal with lots of documents and maps and plans, and it’s important to have good file hygiene and organise and label these appropriately.
12:15 – 13:00 My supervisor emails to ask if I can join one of his client calls in the afternoon and I am happy to do so. To prepare for this he sends over emails and documents from the file e.g. Counsel reports so that I can understand the context to the meeting. I spend some time reading into the matter.
13:00 – 14:00 I meet up with some friends to have lunch together and enjoy the amazing weather.
14:00 – 14:30 Back at my desk and time for a final read through and any last prep for the client call.
14:30 – 15:30 I hop onto the Teams call and my task is to take a note of what is discussed. I have definitely noticed that my ability to type quickly during a discussion has really improved over the last few months, which is helpful. The issue is private nuisance, a topic I had studied during second year tort law, so this is a very interesting call.
15:30 – 16:15 During the call, a few post-call actions are discussed and one is for me to send an email to the other party. I prepare a draft email and send this to my supervisor to check before emailing it to the other party.
16:15 -17:00 My urgent tasks for the day are complete so I decide to use this time to tidy up my note of the call. At times this involves corroborating my note with a quick legal search. I also decide to check over my time recording for the past week and ensure everything is up to date.
17:00 My day usually ends at five so I log off for the day and head out for the weekend!