Court and Courses

In my last post I mentioned that I would write about a trial and a course that I was going to attend, so as promised, here we are!

On Tuesday I went to Court to watch the first day of a trial. This meant that I had the opportunity to observe a whole day in Court where witnesses, including individual and expert witnesses, were cross examined.

I found the day really interesting and it was easy to see how individuals can feel intimidated when having a barrister question them for quite a long period of time. Quite different to how we act it out in our advocacy classes on the PSC!

Few cases come to trial now as everyone is focused on settling outside of Court, so I was happy that this opportunity came up during my seat.

On Wednesday, I travelled to London to attend one of my PSC classes. This class was called "is it enforceable?" And was all about learning how documents should be executed correctly, including agreements and deeds.

I actually found this course rather beneficial. As part of the "electronic" generation of lawyers, we always have some form of precedent to refer to when we are drafting documents, so sometimes we don't actually understand why we are drafting something in a certain way. Rather, we just draft a document knowing that it is the correct way of doing so. So it helped my background knowledge, plus I had a really nice class so that was helpful!

We're at the end of yet another week, and in receipt of yet another Bank Holiday, yippee! I hope that you all enjoy your weekend, hopefully the cold weather will pick up, but it probably won't.

Post-Easter Blues

Well I hope that everyone had a lovely Easter and made the most of their time off, it certainly went by in a flash. I spent my weekend in North Yorkshire and I went out every day to see the different sites, it was great! I think my post-Easter blues started when I was caught in standstill traffic whilst travelling back home on the A1, it was at that moment that I thought, "can't this weekend be at least one day longer?".

The weekend almost feels like a distant memory now that we have come to the end of yet another week. It was back to the paperwork for everyone and I was definitely sad to be back in the office.

This week, I have been involved in a variety of work. I have been drafting letters of claim, putting together bundles and carrying out research. It was also my time to volunteer at the Suffolk Law Advice Centre again. These sessions come round once every three months, but time goes so quickly it feels like the sessions arrive much quicker.

The appointments at the Suffolk Law Advice Centre involved issues such as neighbour disputes and speeding fines, so it was nice to be able to advise on different topics.

In addition to all of this work, I attended a talk at my firm's office about concussion. I would say that a benefit of working in clinical negligence and personal injury is that you get to learn about all kinds of medical problems, even if they can be nasty.

As for next week, I am in Court for two days and also in London on my Professional Skills Course again, so it will be a busy one. I will make sure that I write about that next week.

Busy, Busy, Busy

These past two weeks have been extremely busy, and not in my working life! Last week was a week where everything decided to break. My car broke, my partner's car broke and we managed to blow the electrics with the kettle, what a nightmare!

It's easy to laugh at it now, but it was definitely stressful at the time. Luckily for me I had Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday off this week to get over the stresses of the previous week, but I did not stop for long.

Monday was my 25th Birthday so the day was filled with activities. The zoo, shopping, dinner, the lot! I was extremely tired by the end of the day and was ready to sleep for a  week. However, by Wednesday, it was my partner's birthday! So again, we spent the day doing lots of things. Walks down by Aldeburgh and lunch by the boats, it was a lovely day.

My days off were definitely filled with a variety of activities, but they were worth it. Both days were wonderful and it was great to get out and do different things.

It's also been nice to have a two day working week! I can already look forward to the weekend. And to top it all off, I'm now greeted with two four day weeks because of the bank holiday. Good timing!