Week Three:
Christensen & Ehret, LLP

June 17, 2015

My third week, June 1 through June 5, was chock full of interesting experiences.

It started off on Monday with my mentor, Mr. Mark Christensen, giving me a research project. This project involves me creating a working interface of members of a specific committee in Illinois. The first issue that I ran into with this research is actually finding the members of this committee, themselves. I ended up emailing a Chicago law school professor that I knew for a fact had served on the committee, and she has helped me tremendously. (She’s out of the country now, though, so I’m on my own). After pointing me in the right direction for finding the members, I figured out that the members that I had found were only through 2011, thus missing four years. I have yet to find the members from the past four years, but I am of course using our phenomenal resources from Cole Library at Cornell College, as I have also asked Meghan Yamanishi to help me with ordering specific books/web pages that are closed to the general public. Nevertheless, while we are searching for the mysteriously missing four years of members, I am simultaneously coding the members I have information for based on city, law practiced, and law firm worked for. I am hoping to have a more complete list to present to my mentor by Friday, June 12, or Monday, June 15. Fingers crossed!

My whole week wasn’t just stuck in the office with research though; I got to attend two depositions. A deposition is a witness’ out-of-court testimony. It is mainly used to gather and seek out information and details of an event as part of the discovery process, and thus may be used in court. Both were extremely interesting, but in their own way. The first deposition I attended was for a lawsuit for an injury sustained while on the job. As many cases have a long trial, the deponent had a tough time remembering many different specific details. I thought this was difficult, or maybe almost useless, as I rarely found any significant insight was gained on our end. Nonetheless, after asking the attorney what she thought of the deposition, she said it was helpful, as the forgetfulness of the deponent could in fact undermine a former deponent’s prior testimony. In this I was able to see that it is important to holistically connect discoveries.

The second deposition I attended also dealt with an injury sustained while working. This deposition was different from the first as our client was the one being questioned. One thing that I was confused about was when our attorney objected she still let our client answer the question. I asked her why this is and she stated that she wants it “on the record” that she finds the question asked to be disagreeable in some manner, so then if it appears in court they can allude to said section. Nonetheless, I witnessed first hand how finite details can become important in this sense.

With a jam-packed week full of learning I got to spend the weekend with some friends, old and new. My roommates and I met up with Katarina Maier ’16 and Liz Maier ’14 for lunch in the loop. It was good to see some fellow Cornellians, especially some that live in the Chicagoland area. They were super impressed with the views that my apartment complex had, along with graffiti room. The building I am staying in is actually owned by Columbia College, a school that is know for its art programs within the Chicagoland area. We have made plans to go to a Cubs game within the coming weeks, which I am going to hold them to as Liz lives in Wrigleyville. There are a lot of other events that I’m hoping to get to here in Chicago, including Jazzin’ at the Shedd Aquarium, Fourth of July Fireworks at Navy Pier, a trip to North Avenue Beach, Lollapalooza, and hopefully some other awesome events!

On top of that, things keep winding here in Chicago.