Bonus points for who(m)ever knows where the Latin quote is from and/or what the grammatically correct phrase would be!
Anyway, today it is the 5th November. And on this day I am looking back in history, not to 1605 like most proper British folk, but merely back to September when I was a fresh-faced, naive do-gooder out to right the wrongs of society and provide justice for those who have been injured by the big, nasty man.
So, what have I learnt in this time?
1. One of the very first things I learnt - the "man" can be anything from a family-run business, to a nursery, to little Jonny's grandmother who forgot to clear the ice from her driveway. Now it's not as bad as many people make it out to be - indeed, it's not as bad as I just made it out to be - but there have been occasions where my natural allegiance has been more with the other side than our client.
2. One of the most recent things I've learnt (and this ties in nicely with the above paragraph) is separating the intuitions of personal me and lawyer me. In fact, that's not something that just clicked, it's been a gradual process. Some might call it dehumanisation, but I call it professionalism! But in all honesty, it is a necessary skill in order to do this job. Not just because I might feel a bit bad for sending a nasty legal letter to a struggling family-run corner shop, but because some of the clients have real bad injuries and having now talked to a lot of them, I realise the severity of their situations.
Many of them really don't care (much) about their lawsuits because they are so upset about the position they find themselves in. That really got to me this week in particular, when I realised that all my hard work on a particular client's case wouldn't rectify the fact that s/he will be in a wheelchair for the rest of his/her life. It can be a little disheartening, but it's not my job to worry about their physical or psychiatric conditions, so I'm learning just to put those thoughts out of my mind and just do the best job I can.
3. Another thing I'm just getting used to is waking up early every day. I'm sure it wasn't supposed to take me this long, but until this week I had felt very tired every morning, even when I'd got a solid 8+ hours sleep! But then I did spend the previous year doing very strange hours, and then a very lazy summer waking up late.
4. I've learnt that clients are usually very ungrateful, considering they don't have to pay a penny for the work I do.
5. I've learnt that clients watch too many American courtroom dramas.
6. I've learnt a lot about clients.
7. I've learnt that complex cases are WAY more complicated than simple cases. I mean, I knew there'd be a difficulty gap, but I wasn't expecting it to be that big!
8. I've learnt that blogging is hard. Well... it's not hard to write random rubbish, but it is hard to regularly blog and keep things interesting.
On that note I'm going to go. Bye bye!
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