How to Improve my Internship Site
While I first started writing this, I had a difficult time thinking of problems that the firm has in terms of how it is structured. Because law often isn’t necessarily the most collaborative area of work by nature, it was a little bit more difficult for me to think of ways in which changes could be made because the process by which most law firms work is so set in stone. One attorney with maybe a paralegal or law clerk takes on a client/case, and is then responsible for that one case. As someone who is always in favor of collaboration, I do believe that some sort of collaboration would be beneficial, but I’m not necessarily sure how that would be implemented without causing chaos and disorganization as opposed to providing benefits. One potential idea would be weekly meetings amongst the immigration attorneys at the firm; this would be useful as a time where they could bring up difficulties they were each having with certain cases and collaborate amongst themselves in order to come up with ways to solve these problems. Two other problems I have noticed- neither of them necessarily major problems- are the manner in which case files are stored at the firm and the ratio of administrative work to actual administrative assistants working there. First, the way in which cases are stored is mainly via paper files since all immigration cases must be filed physically- not online. This leads not only to a lot of clutter in the office, but also instances where attorneys or assistants can’t find the file they need because although there is a place the file should be, people will relocate it when they’re working on it. I really haven’t come up with a way to solve this problem since so much of immigration is dealing with hard copies of documents. The second, more easily resolved problem is the amount of administrative work that the department has versus the one legal assistant that is responsible for all of it. Although I expected to do a lot of administrative work at this internship, I surprisingly haven’t been assigned much, but I do watch as people struggle to work with the backlog of administrative tasks. It really does slow down a lot of the other processes in the office, and it could be so easily fixed by hiring someone else who is solely responsible for administrative tasks.
I don’t think storage (of cases) and administrative support are insignificant things; they are very real and they can have a huge impact. Despite the fact a paper copy may be required to be kept (by law) – it does seem that virtual files (until a case is complete lets say) seem to just make sense, particularly if multiple individuals are accessing the same file. Your notion of having meetings among the attorneys seems like a reasonable suggestion; despite the fact that they may be working on a variety of cases, they are all dealing with immigration and with the current political environment – that means things are constantly changing (sometimes in the matter of a day, a few hours, etc.). As you continue, I would encourage you to think about the ways in which you can contribute in the solution of problems/the improvement of leadership (e.g.insights about teamwork and collaboration that could positively impact the environment and work product at your site; drawing from your leadership studies,identifation of issues and sharing concepts and strategies with supervisors and colleagues that could address these issues, etc.). Such reflections will aid you as you complete the academic assignments in the fall.